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More "Dab" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... bowl of rich soup or chowder, with crackers on the side, a generous helping of well-cooked meat, with bread or potatoes, and the simplest relishes, or a royally fat pudding overrun with brandy sauce; each or either can put it all over a splash of this, a dab of that, a slab of something else, set lonesomely on a separate plate and reckoned a meal—in courses. Courses are all well enough—they have my warm heart when they come "in the picture." But when they are mostly "The substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen," then I ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams
... quills, which bristle out when he is angry or frightened. No old dog will touch this animal, for he knows better than to get a mouthful of sharp toothpicks by biting Mr. Porcupine, who is like a round pincushion with the pins pointing out. A dog who has never seen this prickly ball will dab at it, and have a sore paw to nurse for ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton
... ten, with McKnight not yet in sight, Blobs knocked at the door, the double rap we had agreed upon, and on being admitted slipped in and quietly closed the door behind him. His eyes were glistening with excitement, and a purple dab of typewriter ink gave him a peculiarly ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... obeyed, and scraped the lather off again with particular care. Mr Bailey squinted at every successive dab, as it was deposited on a cloth on his left shoulder, and seemed, with a microscopic eye, to detect some bristles in it; for he murmured more than once 'Reether redder than I could wish, Poll.' The operation being concluded, Poll fell back and stared at him again, ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... Logan interrupted, 'what a dab at disentangling Lumley would have been if he had not got that Professorship of Toxicology at Edinburgh, and been able to ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... to receive a dab from the child's nose, by way of a kiss, in return for buying him ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... antennae of some irritable insect it positively trembled. Here was that woman moving—actually going to get up—confound her! He struck the canvas a hasty violet-black dab. For the landscape needed it. It was too pale—greys flowing into lavenders, and one star or a white gull suspended just so—too pale as usual. The critics would say it was too pale, for he was ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... crushing, it is ready to be worked up into domestic and other utensils. Squatted upon the ground, the potter places in her lap a small basket, wood, or pottery base, upon which she places a "dab" of clay. This she thumbs and pats, until it forms the basis of the new vessel. Then another piece of clay is rapidly rolled between her hands, until it is in the form of along rope. This rope is then coiled ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... jotting down notes; Landy Spencer sat quietly, his face immobile; Adine Lough went to the window ostensibly to dab on make-up, but really to suppress smiles and stifle laughter. A man of importance—a bank receiver, an arm of the court—was being kidded and he ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney
... turned, Kennedy reached over to a typewriter desk that stood in a corner of the office, left open by the stenographer, who had gone. He took two thin second sheets of paper and a new carbon sheet. A hasty dab or two of the library paste completed ...
— The Gold of the Gods • Arthur B. Reeve
... mediocrity, moderation. small quantity, modicum, trace, hint, minimum; vanishing point; material point, atom, particle, molecule, corpuscle, point, speck, dot, mote, jot, iota, ace; minutiae, details; look, thought, idea, soupcon, dab, dight[obs3], whit, tittle, shade, shadow; spark, scintilla, gleam; touch, cast; grain, scruple, granule, globule, minim, sup, sip, sop, spice, drop, droplet, sprinkling, dash, morceau[obs3], screed, smack, tinge, tincture; inch, patch, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... you are. You're the most transpontine person I ever saw in my life.' Dick turned to Lucy and Mrs. Crowley with a wave of the hand. 'I call you to witness. When he was at Oxford, Alec was a regular dab at classics; he had a gift for writing verses in languages that no one except dons wanted to read, and everyone thought that he was going to be the most ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... upon a time, O my Best Beloved, there was a Whale, and he ate fishes. He ate the starfish and the garfish, and the crab and the dab, and the plaice and the dace, and the skate and his mate, and the mackereel and the pickereel, and the really truly twirly-whirly eel. All the fishes he could find in all the sea he ate with his mouth—so! Till at last there was only one small fish left in ...
— Just So Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... toward the doorway, the person in question appeared in it, and raised her veil. I was perfectly paralyzed. It was Bella! Bella in a fur coat and a veil, with the most tragic eyes I ever saw and entirely white except for a dab of rouge in the middle of each cheek. We stared at each other without speech. The maid turned and went down the hall, and with that Bella came over to me and clutched me by ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... He'd no relations, and what friends he'd had in the old days had disappeared. So he got him a dog—this fool, a little white scrap of a dog with a black patch." The terrier recognized his name and made a dab at the firm chin. "Steady! Well, yes—you're right. It was a great move. For the little white dog was really a fairy prince in disguise—such a pretty disguise—and straightway led the fool into Paradise. Indeed, they were so happy together, ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... bounced himself if a bee had been buzzing about his nose as it did about mine," said Nancy, and, giving a vicious dab at the pictured features, she drew a bee perched on the end of Gran'ther Wattles's nose. "Here now are all the gray hairs he hath," she added, making three little scratches above ...
— The Puritan Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... rowed back again, Giles described the habits of the birds which frequented this reedy spot. Jamie listened open-eyed to his accounts of the moor-hen, flapper, coot, water-rail, dab-chick, and sand-piper, to say nothing of rats in abundance, and an otter now and then. If you crept upon the islet very quietly, you could hear the rats before you saw them. Carefully listening to the sounds, you frequently discovered the rat himself, generally on the stump of some ...
— A Vanished Hand • Sarah Doudney
... up. His danger only nerved him to action, so he says. So he planted a dab of vermilion in his creature's mouth. The Italian spluttered and tried to wipe it off—evidently horribly surprised. And then—according to Harringay—there began a very remarkable struggle, Harringay splashing away with the red paint, and the picture wriggling about and wiping ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... tender young leaves. I tilted him away from that, and he fluttered across the money-plant over to the geranium opposite. Disturbed there, he flashed to the other side of the stand, and, quick as thought, gave one mighty dab at a delicate little fuchsia that is just "picking up" from the effects of transplanting and a long winter journey. Seeing he was bent on making himself disagreeable, I put him into his cage again, first ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... down, and wet your whistle, my piper! I say, egad! you're the piper that played before Moses! Had you there, Dab. Dab, get a fresh bottle of Burgundy for Mr. Hoskins." And before he knew where he was, there was Gus for the first time in his life drinking Clos-Vougeot. Gus said he had never tasted Bergamy before, at which the bailiff sneered, and told him ...
— The History of Samuel Titmarsh - and the Great Hoggarty Diamond • William Makepeace Thackeray
... was a two hours' journey by horse and phaeton. My grandfather drove. I sat next, my feet swinging clear of the lunchbox. My brother had the outside, a place denied to me for fear that I might fall across the wheel. When we were all set, my mother made a last dab at my nose—an unheeded smudge having escaped my vigilance. Then my grandfather said, "Get up,"—twice, for the lazy horse chose to regard the first summons as a jest. We start. The great wheels turn. My brother leans across the guard to view the miracle. We crunch the gravel. We ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... verra short. 'Nell, gie me the draught.' So wi' that the lassie gied her een a bit quick dab, syne cam' forrit, an' pittin' her airm aneath his heid she gied him a drink. Whatever it was, it quaitened him, an' he lay ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... of the next century as being the weapon with which the new era was inaugurated. Into the breech I place a Boxer cartridge, specialty provided for experimental purposes with a steel bullet. I aim point blank at the dab of red sealing wax upon the wall, which is four inches above the magnet. I am an absolutely dead shot. I fire. You will now advance, and satisfy yourself that the bullet is flattened upon the end of the magnet, after which you will apologise to me ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... my dear—but you must reflect, that, etc., etc., et cetera"—each et cetera a dab of wet wool, taking out more and more stiffening and color, until the beautiful project hangs, a limp rag, on her hands, a forlorn wreck over which ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... exthrame unction, an' the like. Now that business wouldn't shuit me pheesical conformation, an' nayther would it shuit the character I have to bear. It's betther that you should do the outside trampin', Heller. Ye know the tradditions an' docthrines av the Church well enough, an' y' are a dab at Latin. As for yer not bein' av the prastely office, I'll jist lay hands on ye an' qualify ye for the same. If it happens to be a bit irregular, why, the ind justifies the manes, ye remimber, or the ancient Fathers are all wrong, which is onpossible. An' now, Heller, do tell these ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... gathered cowslips with Ruperta Bassett; and he had a canoe, which he carried to adjacent streams, however narrow, and paddled it with singular skill and vigor. A neighboring miller, suffering under drought, was heard to say, "There ain't water enough to float a duck; nought can swim but the dab-chicks and ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... that he,—at wishing tho' a dab,— To wish such harm to any Knight would urge ye? Yet he, a Knight, had taken up a Crab, And thump'd to death, with it, one ...
— Broad Grins • George Colman, the Younger
... on this, as indeed on most other occasions, the artist had paid more attention to verisimilitude and less to mere vague harmonies and so forth, but as he was assured by that intelligent young Hillary that this method was all the Go at present, and that his friend Lucas was recognized as a rising Dab at it. That at least is how he ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... on the glass, it will only make a grease mark, and that hardly visible, not enough to cut by; but take a soft dabber—a lump of cotton-wool tied up in a bit of old handkerchief—and with this, dipped in dry whitening or powdered white chalk, dab the glass all over; then blow the surface and you will see a clear white line where the whitening has stuck to the greasy line made by the transfer paper; and by this you can cut ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... Dab to watch while the new carpets were put down, one after another, and then to see how much at home and comfortable the furniture looked as it was ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various
... and baffled young man raved in three languages, but Emma Campbell flatly refused either to be in "slaveryment" or in the "nekked rind." Visions of herself being caught and painted bare-legged, with a trifling little dab of an apron tied around her waist even as one ties a bit of ribbon around the cat's neck, and of this scandal being ferreted out by the deacons, sisters, and brethren, of the Mount Zion Baptist Church ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... have been duly honoured, there begins a scene of boisterous fun. The women make pads of the boiled sticky new rice, and cover it with soot from their cooking vessels. With these they approach the men and dab the pads upon their faces and bodies, leaving sooty marks that are not easily removed. The men thus challenged give chase, and attempt to get possession of the rice pads and to return the polite attention. For a short space of time a certain ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... Then take it from the board, and give it a bath in the solution. Lay it in a dish, and cover it entirely with the solution, letting it remain there for a few minutes; lift it out, and again lay it on the board face downwards, and with a small sponge dab off any superfluity of liquid. Pour that which is left in the dish back into ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various
... find out. I'm glad they let you in, though, as it will be sport having you here and making you sing small. I do hope, though, it won't get out that you've been coached by a female, or there'll be a terrific lark. I'm getting quite a dab at photography, and shall have my camera up next term. Mind you get the right-shaped boiler, or I shall cut you. The kids are to be stopped wearing round tops like their betters, so you'd best cut yours square. Brown was too 'cute to try for an exhibition. ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... content in a thick fishy, paraffin-y, dripping-y atmosphere. When I came home I could not think what the delicious smell was in a certain street. Then my imagination struck out a picture—Grimers laboriously frying a dab over ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... experiment, I expect. The fellows say that he burns the midnight oil a lot. That's what gives him such a sleepy look sometimes, I suppose. No wonder he's such a dab ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting
... keep the fire going. This diversity of interests certainly made him sit up and pay attention. At each instant he had to desert his flour-sack to rescue the coffee-pot, or to shift the kettle, or to dab hastily at the rice, or to stamp out the small brush, or to pile on more dry twigs. His movements were not graceful. They raised a scurry of dry bark, ashes, wood dust, twigs, leaves, and pine needles, ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... not to have utilized any but fresh-water fish, the Scandinavians, at a date probably less remote however, did not hesitate to brave the ocean. The kitchen-middings contain numerous remains of fish, amongst which those of the mackerel, the dab, and the herring are the most numerous. There, too, we meet with relics of the cod, which never approaches the coast, and must always be sought by the ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... could take her leave, She had to puff up her monstrous sleeve. Then a little dab here and a wee pat there. And a touch or two to her hindmost hair, Then around the room with the utmost care She thoughtfully circulated. Then she seized her gloves and a chamoiskin, Some breath perfume and a long stickpin, A bonbon box and a cloak and some ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... gradually that nothing very serious had occurred, and the father and the females of the household went in to breakfast, the exercises of the morning not being now renewed, while Alf and his brother scoured the wood. Upon one leg of Alf's jeans trousers appeared an artistic dab of red. He had been wounded, and for days the sitting down and the uprising of him ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... judge had stopped with bare assertion, it would have had a good deal of effect; but he made the mistake of trying to prove his position. For some years Wilson had been privately at work on a whimsical almanac, for his amusement—a calendar, with a little dab of ostensible philosophy, usually in ironical form, appended to each date; and the judge thought that these quips and fancies of Wilson's were neatly turned and cute; so he carried a handful of them around one day, and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... by a dab of clay placed at right angles to the axis of the cylinder, at a distance from the bottom determined by the ordinary length of a cell. This wad is not a complete round; it is more crescent-shaped, leaving a circular space between it and one side ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... kin stay free till night, anyhow," said Aun' Suke, pausing in her work to make a dab at a little darky with her wooden spoon sceptre. "Firs' Marse Scoville whirl in en say I free; den old miss whirl in en say I ain'; now conies de gin'ral ob de hull lot en I'se free agin. Wat's mo', ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... Eton stripling, training for the law, A dunce at syntax, but a dab at law, One happy christmas laid upon the shelf His cap and gown, and stores of learned pelf. With all the deathless bards of Greece and Rome, To spend a fortnight at his uncle's home. Arriv'd, and pass'd the usual how d'ye do's, Inquiries of old friends and college ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... piano, a squirrel in the linen closet and a hedgehog in the cellar. He had a cow with a calf too, and an old lame horse-twenty-five years of age—and chickens, and pigeons, and two lambs, and many other animals. But his favorite pets were Dab-Dab the duck, Jip the dog, Gub-Gub the baby pig, Polynesia the parrot, and the ...
— The Story of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... came finally, and from my window I watched the trees along the drive take shadowy form, gradually lose their ghostlike appearance, become gray and then green. The Greenwood Club showed itself a dab of white against the hill across the valley, and an early robin or two hopped around in the dew. Not until the milk-boy and the sun came, about the same time, did I dare to open the door into the hall and look around. Everything was as we had left it. Trunks were heaped ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the eight hours' movement, Mr. Craven." Mr. Craven makes a semi-circular sweep with a huge brush, the point of which lights on a pendulous ash bough. "Eight hours!" he echoes with genial scorn. "Why, if I did, my profession would (dab! dab! dab!) cease (dab! dab! dab!) to (dab!) exist for me"; and the naked bough is clad in graceful foliage with ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... the grey monotone of British winters, and, alighting at a farm road too rough for a carriage, we passed through fields and hedgerows to an erection which looks too insignificant for such solemn use. Don't expect any ghastly details. A longish building of "wattle and dab," much like the northern farmhouses, a high roof, and chimneys resembling those of the "oast houses" in Kent, combine with the rural surroundings to suggest "farm buildings" rather than the "funeral pyre," and all that is horrible is left ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... Lord Guenn. "There are some sketches of the Forsyth place as it used to be at Guenn Oaks that would interest you. My ancestor was a bit of a dab with his brush." ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... yolk of one egg and two tablespoons of milk together; wet each square well with the mixture, lay one raisin in the centre (after the seed has been removed from it), sprinkle thickly with sugar and cinnamon mixed together, then put a small dab of butter on top. Catch the four corners of each square together, so that the inside is protected. Lay the pocket books, not too closely together, in a greased pan and set aside to rise. When well risen bake in a moderately hot oven until ...
— The International Jewish Cook Book • Florence Kreisler Greenbaum
... heard of her and her compositions in this country; and I am happy to add, always to the honour of her character. The fact is, I know not well how to write to her: I should sit down to a sheet of paper that I knew not how to stain. I am no dab at fine-drawn letter-writing; and, except when prompted by friendship or gratitude, or, which happens extremely rarely, inspired by the muse (I know not her name) that presides over epistolary writing, I sit ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... imitation man with the abnormalities of the Roman deity. "The figure," he tells us, "is squat, crouched, as it were, before its own attributes, with arms longer than a gorilla's. The head is of mud or wood rising conically to an almost pointed poll; a dab of clay represents the nose; the mouth is a gash from ear to ear. This deity almost fills a temple of dwarf thatch, open at the sides. ...Legba is of either sex, but rarely feminine.... In this point Legba differs from the classical Pan and Priapus, but the idea involved is the same. The Dahoman, ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... his borrowings, noticing what he adopts and incorporates in his work as artistically true, and what he rejects. Like a water-color landscape-painter, he pauses above the box of crude materials which others have made, takes a dab here and a dab there with his brush, rarely takes all of one color, blends them, eyes the result judicially, and flashes in the combination with ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... at 'em, smoking cigarettes. I could do that sort of work. There's nothing in it. It don't take 'eathen foreigners to dab a bit ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... girl may cook like any chef, And know all HALLAM through, May be a dab at darning socks, Or making Irish stew; But what young cubs care for is cash, And not for ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 17, 1892 • Various
... a staid and well-behaving Citizen who took home a dab of Steak, wrapped up in Brown Paper, nearly every Evening, and found his Excitement by working on the Puzzle Column in ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade
... high-strung temperament. "If that child's own mother walked in this minute I couldn't tell 'em apart, they do favor one another so," old Margaret had told her mistress when she opened the door for the girl, and she was right. Pomford village was full of these hereditary likenesses. Mark Dab-ney, whom all the present trouble was about, was so like his father at his age that his Uncle Harry had picked Mark out on a crowded dock when the lad had visited him in Rio the year before, although he had not seen the boy's father for twenty years—so ...
— The Little Gray Lady - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... well brought up and industrious young man was Hamilton Morris, and he had not the least idea of the good in store for him for several months after Mrs. Kinzer decided to marry him to her daughter Miranda. But all was soon settled. Dab, of course, had nothing to do with the wedding arrangements, and Ham's share was somewhat contracted. Not but what he was at the Kinzer house a good deal; nor did any of the other girls tell Miranda how very much he was in the way. He could talk, however, and one morning, ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... stairs Miss Carter dropped behind the others. So did Bob Strahan. As he waited for her he saw her dab her eyes with her handkerchief and he put out his ...
— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett
... Standing Buffalo and Brown Mink. The chief held the match; the old woman, a knife; the girl was empty-handed. But she was not ill—not wasted—not dying! She was full-figured. Her face was round. Her cheeks and lips were as bright as the dab of paint at the part in her hair—as crimson with health ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... a yellow of the sort that will make approximately the color. Don't stir them up; drag one into the other a little—very little. The color is crude? Another color or two will bring it into tone. Don't mix it much. Don't smear it all over your palette. Make a smallish dab of it, keeping it well piled up. If you get any one color too great in quantity, then you will have to take more of the others again to keep it in balance. Be careful to take as nearly the right proportions of each at the first picking up, so as to mix but few times; for ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst
... marked by all the brightness and incident which made 'Dab Kinzer' such a favorite ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston
... wi' bleth'rin' gab, Wha speeches wove like ony wab; O' ilk ane's corn aye took a dab, And a' for a fee; Accounts he owed through a' the toun, And tradesmen's tongues nae mair could drown; But now he thought to clout his goun Wi' ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... lamb. The girls will all, eventually, put on; fill up"—Sylvia added a dab of clay to a doubtful curve—"but men, when they chip off from the approved design, look like nothing on ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... it was the urgency of going back that confronted her. She had come down in the morning to find her breakfast laid in just the way she liked it—tea, a soft-boiled egg, buttered toast, and, as a special temptation to a capricious appetite, a dab of marmalade. She sat down to the table unwillingly, sipping at the tea and nibbling at the toast, but leaving the egg and the marmalade untouched. In her mother's bustling to and fro she felt the long-delayed protest in the atmosphere. It came while her mother ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... curtain fell, people were so busy wiping their eyes that for a moment they forgot to applaud. That silent moment was more flattering than noise; and as Mrs Jo wiped the real tears off her sister's face, she said as solemnly as an unconscious dab of ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... above all in the unnaturally tidy children to whom he was presently introduced. He could still feel the one cold kiss which Ida had given him, and, when he was shown up to his room, he unconsciously gave the spot an extra dab with the sponge. ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... never shrank. She was apparently never wounded. She seldom showed that any subject jarred on her. It is affirmed that animals develop certain organs to meet the exigencies of their environment. A sole's eye (or is it a sand-dab's?) travels up round its head regardless of appearances when it finds it is more wanted there than on the lower side. We often see a similar distortion in the mental features of the wives of literary men. So perhaps also Magdalen had adapted herself to the Bellairs' environment, ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... and get him to fix you up something appropriate?" suggested John Peter. "Old Benny, I mean, that writes the letters for seamen. He's a dab at verses. People go to him regular for the In-Memoriams they ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... nurse and Gertie, had agreed to unite their powers that day in a resolute effort to overtake the household repairs. They were in a cottage now, of the style familiarly known as "wattle and dab," which was rather picturesque than permanent, and suggestive of simplicity. They sat on rude chairs, made by Scholtz, round a rough table by the same artist. Mrs Brook was busy with the rends in a blue pilot-cloth jacket, a dilapidated remnant of ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... fish of many shapes and sizes in the fishmonger's shop; they can be divided into two kinds—round fish and flat fish. Cod, Herring, Mackerel and Salmon are round fish. The flat fish are Plaice, Turbot, Brill, Halibut, Sole, Dab ...
— Within the Deep - Cassell's "Eyes And No Eyes" Series, Book VIII. • R. Cadwallader Smith
... on! What have you stolen? A pin from Elise's pin cushion,—or some powder from her puff-box? Another dab on your nose would greatly improve your appearance,—if you ask me! It's as ...
— Patty's Social Season • Carolyn Wells
... cut his own back to pay an old grudge against the other man. Another fellow rushed in here gesticulating complaint, who was literally soaked in blood. We had had our experience and so sending for an interpreter, we soused this fellow into a bathtub. Every dab came off and there was not a ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... death of the bailie, because, poor man, he had outlived the times for which he was qualified; and, instead of the merriment and jocularity that his wily by- hand ways used to cause among his neighbours, the rising generation began to pick and dab at him, in such a manner, that, had he been much longer spared, it is to be feared he would not have been allowed to enjoy his earnings both with ease and honour. However, he got out of the world with some respect, and the matters of which I have now to speak, ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... great steamship, but then she had got home safely, and she was such a little thing, after all. Whatever excitement there had been in the village died out as soon as it was known that the boys were safe; and then, too, Mrs. Lee found time to "wonder wot Dab Kinzer means to do wid all de money he done got for ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... clearly understood that I do so in no sense as expressing Mr. Bumpkin's present condition. He had risen from the English peasantry, and was what is usually termed a "self-made man." He was born in a little hut consisting of "wattle and dab," and as soon as he could make himself heard was sent into the fields to "mind the birds." Early in the November mornings, immediately after the winter sowings, he would be seen with his little bag of brown bread round his neck, trudging along with a ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... imagining, I presume, that her bosom has all the softness and snugness of an eiderdown pillow. But she has no great tenderness even in her best of moods, and, sooner or later—oftener soon than late—is apt to fling off her nestlings with a scratch of her claw, a dab of her beak, or a rankling ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Dame Frugal's ducks, for the sake of seeing them waddle; and then, when they got to the pond, he sent his dog in after them to bark and frighten them out of their wits. And as I came by, nothing would serve him but throwing a great dab of mud all over the sleeve of my coat. So I said, "Why, Master Sam, you need not have done that; I did nothing to offend you; and however amusing you may think it to insult poor people, I assure you ...
— The Life and Perambulations of a Mouse • Dorothy Kilner
... likely that it was a strain of that boyishness which I hope survives in us all, and one of whose quaint fancies is an envy of house-painters, so happy all day with paint-pot and brush and great smooth boards to dab and smooth, that decided him to do the job himself. Mr. Moggridge had this great element of refinement, that he thought nothing ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne
... dab out, as Sibby calls it,' said Lance. 'It's my puggery. Ever since it fell overboard it has been a disgrace to human nature, so I have been washing it, and now I've ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... emphatically; 'without a pad upon his body, and hardly a touch of paint upon his face, he'd make such an actor for the starved business as was never seen in this country. Only let him be tolerably well up in the Apothecary in Romeo and Juliet, with the slightest possible dab of red on the tip of his nose, and he'd be certain of three rounds the moment he put his head out of the practicable door ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... Arul dashes the cold water over her face, hands, and feet. No soap is required, no towel—the sun is shining and will soon dry everything in sight. Next comes the tooth-brushing act, when a smooth stick takes the place of a brush, and "Kolynos" or "Colgate" is replaced by a dab of powdered charcoal. Arul combs her hair only for life's great events, such as a wedding or a festival, and changes her clothes so seldom that it is better form not to ...
— Lighted to Lighten: The Hope of India • Alice B. Van Doren
... about the calf, and so hungry to see him, that by the time the apple-float came on the table I thought it would have to be fed to me by old Eph. Mother made it worse by remarking, as she put a lovely dab of thick cream right ...
— Over Paradise Ridge - A Romance • Maria Thompson Daviess
... Judy," she complained as that indefatigable artist sat on the beach with her easel before her, in a blue work-apron, and with a dab of charcoal ...
— Judy • Temple Bailey
... fishing for their breakfast, for there was famine in the settlement, and the few pioneers left in it were kept alive on a diet of roast flathead. On the beach three boats were drawn up out of reach of the tide, and looking behind him Jack counted twelve huts and one store of wattle-and-dab. The store had been built to hold the goods of the Port Albert Company. It was in charge of John Campbell, and contained a quantity of axes, tomahawks, saddles and bridles, a grindstone, some shot and powder, two double-barrelled guns, nails and hammers, and a ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... apparitions in white, obviously enjoying their employment. During this not a word was exchanged; except for the shuffling feet, the piano, an occasional phrase of encouragement from the instructor, himself gliding with a dab of fat in exaggerated ribbons, there wasn't a sound. To Lee it had the appearance of the negation of pleasure; it was, in its way, as bad as the determined dancing of adults; it had the look of a travesty of that. Helena conducted a restive partner, trying ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... mixture of the two preceding elements, the direct creation and the metaphor: le cab jaspine, je marronne que la roulotte de Pantin trime dans le sabri, the dog is barking, I suspect that the diligence for Paris is passing through the woods. Le dab est sinve, la dabuge est merloussiere, la fee est bative, the bourgeois is stupid, the bourgeoise is cunning, the daughter is pretty. Generally, to throw listeners off the track, slang confines itself to adding to ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... cabin. The work did not seem to him to be called for in such a hurry. What was the use of altering anything? It was a very good accommodation, spacious, well-distributed, on a rather old-fashioned plan, and with its decorations somewhat tarnished. But a dab of varnish, a touch of gilding here and there, was all that was necessary. As to comfort, it could not be improved by any alterations. He resented the notion of change; but he said dutifully that he would keep his eye on the workmen if the captain would only let him know what was the nature of the ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... appeared—more reproachful-looking than sympathetic, as though I hadn't ordered that dressing-case specially on his behalf. He said he thought one of the housemaids would have some sticking-plaster. He was very sorry he was needed downstairs, but he would tell one of the housemaids. I continued to dab and to curse. The blood flowed less. I showed great spirit. I vowed Braxton should not prevent me from going ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... running away as best her bulk allowed, casting glances that were half frightened, half triumphant, behind her; while Mark was sitting up, rubbing a bump on his forehead ruefully, and Lil Artha had taken out a handkerchief to dab at his ...
— Pathfinder - or, The Missing Tenderfoot • Alan Douglas
... be in sections. No use sending you a little dab of news now and then. I'll write when I can, and mail when the letter assumes real proportions. Your package arrived and I was delighted. I think I slept better last night on your little pillow than any night since we were called out. My pillow ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... blackbird hopped down upon the grass and took a tentative dab or two at the first slug he came across; but it was really too early for breakfast for a good hour yet, so he flew up again into a bush and preened his feathers, which had been discomposed by the limited accommodation ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... unfortunate friend is engaged in lamentations, and is composing melancholy verses upon the departure of Mademoiselle Mimi, who, I hear, has thrown him over. Well, for my part, I too, regret the loss of that young woman. She was a dab hand at making coffee, which is the beverage of serious minds. But I trust that Rodolphe will console himself, and soon ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... resolved to live, 65 When he had learned it, When he had gathered all books had to give! Sooner, he spurned it. Image the whole, then execute the parts— Fancy the fabric 70 Quite, ere you build, ere steel strike fire from quartz. Ere mortar dab brick! ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... Black Friars sitting back to back Fished from the bridge for a pike or a jack. The first caught a tiddler, the second caught a crab, The third caught a winkle, the fourth caught a dab, The fifth caught a tadpole, the sixth caught an eel, And the seventh one caught an ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, June 7, 1916 • Various
... to the eye. I've seen pictures in my time, but never one that made a dab of paint look a mile deep. Besides, why draw a thing when you can lie on your back and look ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... insisted, "you must remember that the beggars were Ghazees; they're hard to stop. Then, our men were worn out and had been sniped every night for the last week or two. However, the bugler's the key to my explanation; I'll put this dab of cigar ash here to represent him. This bishop's Bertram, and you can judge by the distance whether the fellow could have heard the order to blow, 'Cease fire,' through the row that ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... from a dull blue-gray wood and Dane knew that if he picked one up he would discover that it weighed close to nothing in his hand. That was lacquel bark—the aromatic product of a Venusian vine. And each little animal or reptile lay encased in a soft dab of frothy white—frosh weed—the perfumed seed casing of the Martian canal plants. One or two figures on the second tray were of a red-brown wood and these Van Rycke ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... herself a larger treat than usual for the others; but it was incredible that no one would come after all, and that Darling would never see the palace on the beach, and the state-rooms, and the limpets, and the seaweed, and the salt-water soup, and the real fish (a small dab discarded from a herring-net) which Madam ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... big house and old massa come round through de quarters every mornin' and see how us niggers is. If us sick he call nuss. She old slavery woman. She come look at 'em. If dey bad sick dey send for de doctor. Us house all log house. Dey all dab with dirt 'tween de logs. Dey have dirt chimney make out of sticks and dab with mud. Dey [Transcriber's note: unfinished sentence at end ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves. - Texas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... thim all, an' I worried the bullet out wid my teeth as fast as I cud, the room bein' empty. Then I tuk my boot an' the clanin'-rod and knocked out the pin av the fallin'-block. Oh, 'twas music when that pin rowled on the flure! I put ut into my pouch an' stuck a dab av dirt on the holes in the plate, puttin' the fallin'-block back. 'That'll do your business, Vulmea,' sez I, lyin' easy on the cot. 'Come an' sit on my chest the whole room av you, an' I will take you to my bosom for the biggest ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... Man, after intently following the process, says he believes he could find the middle.) Well, don't tell—that's all. I'm 'ere all alone, agin the lot o' ye, and I want to win if I can—one dog to a bone! (The S.-F.M. produces a florin from a mouldy purse, and stakes it, and makes a dab at the coil with the skewer.) No, ye're wrong—that's outside! (O.B.F. pulls the strip out.) By Gum, ye've done it, after all! 'Ere's four bob for you, and I'm every bit as pleased as if I'd won myself! ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, November 19, 1892 • Various
... seizing her by the arms, held her tightly in her chair, while several others smeared soap over her face and stuck on feathers which they took out of a cushion. She would have screamed, but every time she opened her mouth to do so she received a dab of soap upon her tongue. When they considered her countenance was sufficiently ornamented, they presented her with a looking-glass ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... forgetful old fool!" he stated with conviction. "I meandered out to take a look around for her, and I didn't like the looks of that little dab of a saddle Conrad had put on Pat. You didn't see anything of ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... but I repeat it here, that there must never be too much sauce, however good, to any dish, and that the consistency is most important: it must be thick enough to mask a spoon, yet run from it freely. Nothing can be worse than a dab of white mush being served as sauce, unless it be a quantity of thin, milky soup floating on every plate. This is where the happy medium must be struck. It is perfectly easy to give exact proportions to produce certain degrees of thickness, and this has ...
— Choice Cookery • Catherine Owen
... fanning herself with a newspaper. Mrs. Cramer on the left, having finished her sweeping, had come out on the porch also, and in garments that indicated no padding whatever dropped into a rocking chair, crossed her legs, made a dab at her loosely piled hair to see it did not topple down, and proceeded to read the morning newspaper. It was positively shocking, thought Mrs. Barnett, how women could so far ...
— The Desert Fiddler • William H. Hamby
... little general, beaming smile all round. Only Margaret can see the nervousness of it. She had taken off her hat in the hall, and her pretty, short air is lying loosely on her forehead. There is a tiny dab of mud on her cheek, close to the eye. It is distinctly becoming, and looks more like a Queen Anne patch ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... boughs and shoots of the indigenous Acacias a ready substitute for the purpose, and they used them for constructing the partitions and outer-walls of the early houses, by forming a "wattling" and daubing it with plaster or clay. (See Wattle-and-dab.) The trees thus received the name of Wattle-trees, quickly contracted to Wattle. Owing to its beautiful, golden, sweet-scented clusters of flowers, the Wattle is the favourite tree of the Australian poets and painters. The bark ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... dabbing his fat head for some time— and it smokes to such an extent that he seems to light his pocket- handkerchief at it, which smokes, too, after every dab—"to pursue the subject we are endeavouring with our lowly gifts to improve, let us in a spirit of love inquire what is that Terewth to which I have alluded. For, my young friends," suddenly addressing the 'prentices and Guster, ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... slipping matronly looking rings on her fingers and adding an extra dab of powder. She took another chocolate, hugged Monster, gave orders about sending back the lingerie, remarked that she must send her photograph to the society editor for the next day's edition, and she thought the one taken in her ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... was a round, plump, elderly face, with a short nose, delicately pink at the tip. The eyes were a pale blue, and just under the lower lip, which protruded slightly, was a small gray-red goatee, sticking straight out from a cleft in the chin like a dab of a sandy sheep's wool. Also, as the speaker swung himself further round, I took note of a shirt of plaited white linen billowing out over his chest and ending at the top in a starchy yet rumply collar that rolled ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... who walked badly. In his best days, as he records in one of his letters, it was said of him that he "tripped like a pewit." "If I do not flatter myself," he wrote when he was just under sixty, "my march at present is more like a dab-chick's." A lady has left a description of him entering a room, "knees bent, and feet on tiptoe as if afraid of a wet floor." When his feet were not swollen with the gout, they were so slender, he said, that he "could dance a minuet on a ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... sweet it was to see them snap at her again from the red eiderdown!... But the nose, which was of some black composition, wasn't at all firm. It must have had a knock, somehow. Never mind—a little dab of black sealing-wax when the time came—when it was absolutely necessary... Little rogue! Yes, she really felt like that about it. Little rogue biting its tail just by her left ear. She could have taken it off and laid it on her lap and stroked it. She felt a tingling in her hands ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... snowy white, and bubbles, Tufts of straw, sands, fragments, Buoyed hither from many moods, one contradicting another, From the storm, the long calm, the darkness, the swell, Musing, pondering, a breath, a briny tear, a dab of liquid or soil, Up just as much out of fathomless workings fermented and thrown, A limp blossom or two, torn, just as much over waves floating, drifted at random, Just as much for us that sobbing dirge of Nature, Just as much, whence ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... spectre of "The Castle Spectre" school of plays—the phantom in a white sheet with a dab of red paint upon its breast, that rose from behind a tomb when a blow was struck upon a gong and a teaspoonful of blue fire was lighted in the wings, probably found its last home in the travelling theatre long known ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... says he, 'an' hould your tongue,' says he, 'while I discoorse it,' says he. 'An' who are ye,' says he, 'in the name iv of all the holy saints?' says he, givin' the door a dab iv a crusheen that wakened Bill inside. 'I ax,' says he, 'who are ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume III. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... this dab upon the wagon," Johnson said, referring to the bed, and it was carried down by the brothers, and the dead man's portmanteau thrown ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... Kenny in an interval of frantic excitement would not have been forced to fish him out of the stream by his coattails. He considered always that he saved the old man's life. Nor had he meant to dab at him with the oar, thereby encouraging the unfortunate old chap to duck and misinterpret his obvious intention to ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... Polly happened to be talking, or trying to talk, to one of the "poky" gentlemen whom Fan had introduced. He took Miss Milton down, of course, put her in a corner, and having served her to a dab of ice and one macaroon, he devoted himself to his own supper with such interest, that Polly would have fared badly, if Tom had not come ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... in his work, he made rapid progress, and soon became an expert smith and metal worker. He displayed his skill especially in forging light ironwork; and a favourite job of his was the making of "Trivets" out of the solid, which only the "dab hands" of the shop could do, but which he threw off with great rapidity in first rate style. These "Trivets" were made out of Spanish iron bolts—rare stuff, which, though exceedingly tough, forged like wax under the hammer. Even at the close of his life, when he had acquired ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... jist hung on and hollered to beat thunder, and everybody wuz a yellin' all to onct, and that durned boat wuz a goin' faster'n greased lightnin' and I had one hand on my pockit book and tother on my hat, and we went kerslap dab into that duck pond, and the durned boat upsot and we went into the water, and that durned female critter hung onto me and hollered "save me, I'm jist a drownin'." Wall the water wasn't very deep and I jist started to wade out when along cum another boat and run over us, and ...
— Uncles Josh's Punkin Centre Stories • Cal Stewart
... to dab at her eyes with a damp, small wad of blue-bordered handkerchief. "I just couldn't tell him in the daytime. I nearly did, last night. I meant to, 'cross-my-heart,' I did! We went for a walk, and I was just—just sort ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... on the grand scale the laws which in less obtrusive form govern the whole aesthetic life of woman. Painting, for instance, dwindles in her hands into the "sketch;" the brown sands in the foreground, the blue wash of the sea, and the dab of rock behind. Not a very lofty or amusing thing, one would say at first sight; but, if one thinks of it, an eminently practical thing, rapid and easy of execution, not mewing the artist up in solitary studio, but lending itself gracefully ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... German's hand; emptied out the contents, dusted it and put in ground rice till it was two-thirds full. Then, with the lap-scissors, she trimmed a piece of paper to the right size, wrote "A" upon it, and stuck it to the side of the bottle with a dab of treacle—she had nothing else. She was hastily wiping off the surplus stickiness when the bell rang again. She finished what she was doing, and shrouded the bottle in a duster, so that there was ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... my father, "just move your tusk a little nearer, please, and I'll show you how to begin." My father wet the brush in the pool, squeezed on a dab of tooth paste, and scrubbed very hard in one tiny spot. Then he told the rhinoceros to wash it off, and when the pool was calm again, he told the rhinoceros to look in the water and see how white the little spot was. It was hard to see in the dim light of the jungle, but sure enough, the ...
— My Father's Dragon • Ruth Stiles Gannett
... be a dab at drunken drivel, And he'll have to be a daisy at sick gush, To turn on the taps of swagger and of snivel, Raise the row-de-dow heel-chorus and hot flush. He must know the taste of sensual young masher, As well as that of aitch-omitting snob; And then—well, I'll admit he is a dasher, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 21, 1893 • Various
... beginning up to to-day—make it sixty, if you want to; make it a hundred million —it's no difference about a few millions one way or t'other. Well, now, you can see, yourself, that when you come to spread a little dab of people like that over these hundreds of billions of miles of American territory here in heaven, it is like scattering a ten-cent box of homoeopathic pills over the Great Sahara and expecting to find them again. You can't expect us to amount to anything in ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Henry, wuz huntin' in an' old field. In dem days bear, deer, turkey, and squirrels wuz plentiful an' 'twant long befo' we had kilt all we could carry. As we wuz startin' home some monstrous thing riz up right smack dab in front ov us, not more'n 100 feet away. I asked Henry: "Black Boy, does yo' see whut I see?" an' Henry say, "Nigger I hopes yo' don't see whut I see, 'cause dey ain't no such man." But dere it stood, wid its sleeves gently flappin' ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Arkansas Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... loose windrows, little corpses, Froth, snowy white, and bubbles, Tufts of straw, sands, fragments, Buoyed hither from many moods, one contradicting another, From the storm, the long calm, the darkness, the swell, Musing, pondering, a breath, a briny tear, a dab of liquid or soil, Up just as much out of fathomless workings fermented and thrown, A limp blossom or two, torn, just as much over waves floating, drifted at random, Just as much for us that sobbing dirge of Nature, Just ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... rice often enough to prevent it from burning, and trying to rustle sufficient dry wood to keep the fire going. This diversity of interests certainly made him sit up and pay attention. At each instant he had to desert his flour-sack to rescue the coffee-pot, or to shift the kettle, or to dab hastily at the rice, or to stamp out the small brush, or to pile on more dry twigs. His movements were not graceful. They raised a scurry of dry bark, ashes, wood dust, twigs, leaves, and pine needles, a certain proportion of which found their way into the coffee, ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... letter will be in sections. No use sending you a little dab of news now and then. I'll write when I can, and mail when the letter assumes real proportions. Your package arrived and I was delighted. I think I slept better last night on your little pillow than any ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... Doldrums. A dead calm, and nothing to do but kill time. Dodd had put down Neptune: that old blackguard could no longer row out on the ship's port side and board her on the starboard, pretending to come from ocean's depths; and shave the novices with a rusty hoop and dab a soapy brush in their mouths. But champagne popped, the sexes flirted, and the sailors span fathomless yarns, and danced rattling hornpipes, fiddled to by the grave Fullalove. " If there is a thing I can dew, it's ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... locked herself in out of very shame of the rare tears which had been brought to the surface by the sisters' cruel treatment of Abraham. When she heard his call she hastened to the blue wash-basin and began hurriedly to dab her eyes. He would be alarmed if he saw the traces of her weeping. Whatever had happened to him, for his sake she must face it valiantly. He called again. Again she did not answer, knowing that her voice would be full of the telltale tears. Abe waited. He heard ...
— Old Lady Number 31 • Louise Forsslund
... I the awful thing? Not a rat or a puff or a dab of rouge allowed in these here premises. I do look a sight—a fright. Gee!" She turned. "You're not so worse. ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... She was rubbing distressfully at a dab of rouge on her cheek. "I knew you would be cross, but I had to; they made me. They said I looked like a spectre at the feast with my chalk face; I frightened away the customers. It's just a little pink,—all ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... gentle alarm and begun to teeter around, Kenny in an interval of frantic excitement would not have been forced to fish him out of the stream by his coattails. He considered always that he saved the old man's life. Nor had he meant to dab at him with the oar, thereby encouraging the unfortunate old chap to duck and misinterpret his obvious intention to ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... anent the death of the bailie, because, poor man, he had outlived the times for which he was qualified; and, instead of the merriment and jocularity that his wily by- hand ways used to cause among his neighbours, the rising generation began to pick and dab at him, in such a manner, that, had he been much longer spared, it is to be feared he would not have been allowed to enjoy his earnings both with ease and honour. However, he got out of the world with some ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... through her handkerchief, which she was using to dab her eyes; of Longstreet she never for an instant lost sight. She saw the eagerness in his eyes and knew that it was an eagerness to believe in her. She saw Helen's anger and contempt; she saw Carr's black looks; she saw, too, how Howard kept ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... they are! It was the most absurd kiss. I don't believe he'd ever kissed a woman in his life before. I threw my head back, and it was a sort of slidy, pecking dab, just on the end of the chin here.' Mrs. Hauksbee tapped her masculine little chin with her fan. 'Then, of course, I was furiously angry, and told him that he was no gentleman, and I was sorry I'd ever met him, and so on. He was crushed so easily ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... a dab at any feat or exercise. Dab, quoth Dawkins, when he hit his wife on the a-se with a pound ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... streaks of a lighter color upon the dusty cheeks and several dingy marks upon the damask towel which he applied to dry them. With the silver-backed brush which lay beside the bowl he made a frantic dab at his tangled hair, shook himself deeper into his over-large jacket, and ...
— Divided Skates • Evelyn Raymond
... you of using pretty names, did he—you don't care much for dear and darling any more? Bit hard on me, but fortunately for you, Janie Janet, I'm rather a dab at languages—'specially when it comes to what the late lamented Boche referred to as 'cosy names.' Querida mi alma, douchka, Herzliebchen, carissima; and bien, bien-aimee, I'll not run out of salutations for you this side of ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... to myself, 'A joke is a joke, if it tante carried too far, but this critter win be strangled, as sure as a gun, if he lays here splutterin' this way much longer.' So I jist gives the hoss a dab in the mouth, and made him git up; and then sais I, 'Prince,' sais I, for I know'd him by his beard, he had one exactly like one of the old saint's heads in an Eyetalian pictur, all dressed to a pint, so sais I, 'Prince,' and a plaguy handsum man he is too, and as full of fun as a kitten, so ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... moisture and looking more ethereal than ever, sat in the bows timorously inhaling the breath of freedom, when all on a sudden voices invisible in the mist, came round a corner. It was one of Ar-hap's war-canoes toiling up-stream. Heru and I ducked down into the haze like dab-chicks and held our breath. ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... main (payment by results being the rule in this department of industry), and attendant boys strolled up and down, picking the fleeces from the floor and carrying them to the sorter's table. One was the tar-boy, whose business it was to dab a brushful of tar upon any scarlet patch appearing upon a white under-coat where the shears had clipped too close. The sorter or classer stood behind his long table, above and at right angles to the lines of sheep-pens and shearers. Near him on either hand were ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... moment there came a loud knock at the door; a single, solid dab of the knocker which Polton seemed ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... but then she had got home safely, and she was such a little thing, after all. Whatever excitement there had been in the village died out as soon as it was known that the boys were safe; and then, too, Mrs. Lee found time to "wonder wot Dab Kinzer means to do wid all de money he ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... answer was to dab anew, and so thickly that the powder was strewn over the front of her dress and the floor. The clothes she had taken off were flung on a chair; as she brushed past them, they fell to the ground. She did not stoop to pick ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... sobbed Molly, making a dab at her eyes with the potato, but remembering in time to substitute the ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... present of them, as he found nothing in his capital that could compare with their beauty; he received this answer: "Bous quets meste de noustes coos et de noustes bees; mei per co qui es Deus pialars diu temple, aquets que son di Diu, dab eig quep at bejats." "You may dispose of our hearts and our goods at your will; as for the columns, they belong to God; ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... cut the potatoes into slices of equal thickness, say the thickness of two penny pieces; and as they are cut out of hand, let them be dropped into a pan of cold water. When about to fry the potatoes, first drain them on a clean cloth, and dab them all over, in order to absorb all moisture; while this has been going on, you will have made some kind of fat (entirely free from water or gravy, such as lard, for instance) very hot in a frying-pan, and into this drop your prepared potatoes, only a good ...
— A Plain Cookery Book for the Working Classes • Charles Elme Francatelli
... neatly that I could almost have sworn it was an accident. Indeed the exclamation of annoyance with which the culprit greeted his handiwork sounded so perfectly genuine that if I hadn't known what was in the note I should have been completely deceived. I saw the waiter step forward and dab hurriedly at the stain with a napkin, while the author of the damage, coolly pulling up another glass, helped himself to a fresh supply from the bottle. A more beautifully carried out little bit of acting it has never been ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges
... after years of devotion to Marian, John Gilman let Eileen make a perfect rag of him and tie him into any kind of knot she chose. Peter, when Marian left here she had lost everything on earth but a little dab of money. She had lost a father who was fine enough to be my father's best friend. She had lost a mother who was fine enough to rear Marian to what she is. She had lost them in a horrible way that left her room for a million fancies and regrets: 'if I had done this,' or 'if I ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... start by saying that the question was outside the sphere of my activities," he decided. "I should then proceed to add, as a private person, that a little dab on the left side would do it ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the exact distance from "tip to tip." Another waggish picture is made by the snub-nosed girl with her hair arranged a la Madonna. These long hirsute lamberquins on either side of her face make the poor little nose appear even smaller, like unto a wee dab of putty or a ...
— The Woman Beautiful - or, The Art of Beauty Culture • Helen Follett Stevans
... feels a guy, she's going to look it. Why, it took those two girls just six minutes to transfer that goddess rig from Miss Preston to Miss Townsend. She didn't have time to powder, and she didn't have time to dab on paint, and, besides, she had had no rehearsals. That's why ...
— The Mermaid of Druid Lake and Other Stories • Charles Weathers Bump
... Bailey's much of a dab at music." Mr. Pellew was reflecting on the humorous background of Miss Dickenson's character, clear to his insight in her last speech. "But it was just post-time when we got back from the flower-show.... What then? Why, her young ladyship must have ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... thin, wiry man of middle height and middle age. Such a face I had never seen. The first sight of it made me suck in my breath as if I had touched the edge of a razor. The bridge half of his nose had gone, or he had never had it, and the lower half was stuck like a dab of putty midway between mouth and eyebrows. His little, beady eyes were set in large, shallow sockets, giving him an owl-like appearance. A mouth originally large enough, and thickly lipped like a negro's, had been extended, as it seemed, to his left ear ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... receive a dab from the child's nose, by way of a kiss, in return for buying him off ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... 'T[e]resh'. He said '[)A]dam' because, although the Septuagint and other books retained the bare form of the name, there were other writings in which the name was extended by a Latin termination. There was no like extension to tempt him to say anything but 'C[a]desh', '[E]dom', 'J[a]don', 'N[a]dab'. I must admit my inability to explain 'Th[)o]mas', but doubtless there is a reason. The abbreviated form was of course first 'Th[)o]m' and then 'T[)o]m'. Possibly the pet name has claimed dominion over the classical ...
— Society for Pure English Tract 4 - The Pronunciation of English Words Derived from the Latin • John Sargeaunt
... 'shame' too," continued Sarah, "for she gave them a dab with her paw on their ears, and said ...
— Little Mittens for The Little Darlings - Being the Second Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... voice of the Lobster, I hear him complain, That hypnotic suggestion is on me again; I was mesmerised once and behold, since that time, I have yielded myself to suggestions of crime: I have compassed the death of an innocent "dab," And attempted to poison an ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 19, 1891 • Various
... painting, but never get at the true root of the matter. Body alive, man! When you were talking about my pictures, I then began to understand myself for the first time, I believe; and because you do not imitate my style,—do not, like a good many others, take a tube of black paint in your hand, or dab on a few glaring colours, or even make two or three crippled figures with repulsive faces look up from the midst of filth and dirt, and then say, 'There's a Salvator for you!'—just for these very reasons I think a good deal of you. I tell you, my lad, you'll not find a more ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... stout red-faced lady with grey hair and a large apron, the latter convenience somehow suggesting, as she stood about with a resolute air, that she viewed her little pupils as so many small slices cut from the loaf of life and on which she was to dab the butter of arithmetic and spelling, accompanied by way of jam with a light application of the practice of prize-giving. I recall an occasion indeed, I must in justice mention, when the jam really was thick—my only memory of a schoolfeast, strange ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... something of a reserved and thoughtful air, as if he were engaged in deep arithmetical calculations. He is renowned for his acquaintance with the swell mob. Sergeant Mith, a smooth-faced man with a fresh bright complexion, and a strange air of simplicity, is a dab at housebreakers. Sergeant Fendall, a light- haired, well-spoken, polite person, is a prodigious hand at pursuing private inquiries of a delicate nature. Straw, a little wiry Sergeant of meek demeanour and strong sense, would knock at a door and ask a series of ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... bread, salt beef, and such low fare. Of course there was soon a deficiency of the better articles in the Department, the Army Commissary at Hilton Head declaring that we used up more candles and sugar than any regiment; so we have got to draw soldier's rations again, a few candles, a little dab of sugar, a big hunk of salt food, and hard biscuit. They can be swapped for duck and chickens, but what a bother to ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... she loved sad stories also. She knew "The Scottish Chiefs" almost by heart. It was foolish, perhaps, to lie under the trees and read sobbingly until she could hardly see what she was reading for the tears, and then dab at her eyes with a sopping wet handkerchief; but ... it was Arethusa. She ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... bleth'rin' gab, Wha speeches wove like ony wab; O' ilk ane's corn aye took a dab, And a' for a fee; Accounts he owed through a' the toun, And tradesmen's tongues nae mair could drown; But now he thought to clout ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... said Helen, pretending to dab her eyes. "It's emotion mussing up the whole blamed business, as ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... heartily at this evidence of Mrs. Popham's celerity, while Osh, as pleased as possible, gave one dab with his paste brush ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... occasionally even surpassed (Frederick Confessed it with amazement) those of the Marquis de la Fare. Voltaire, there could be no doubt, would do just what was needed; he would know how to squeeze in a little further the waist of the German Calliope, to apply with his deft fingers precisely the right dab of rouge to her cheeks, to instil into her movements the last nuances of correct deportment. And, if he did that, of what consequence were the blemishes of his personal character? 'On peut apprendre de bonnes ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... resumes after dabbing his fat head for some time— and it smokes to such an extent that he seems to light his pocket- handkerchief at it, which smokes, too, after every dab—"to pursue the subject we are endeavouring with our lowly gifts to improve, let us in a spirit of love inquire what is that Terewth to which I have alluded. For, my young friends," suddenly addressing the 'prentices and Guster, to their consternation, ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... were greatly concerned when they heard of Daisy's illness—in especial, Mr. Dove was concerned, and expressed himself willing to do all in his power for the sweet, pretty little lady. He said he knew a doctor of the name of Jones, who was a dab hand with children, and if the young ladies liked he would run round to Dr. Jones's house, and ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... you have paid. And will you tell Irving for me —I can't get up courage enough to talk about this misfortune myself, except to you, whom by good luck I haven't damaged yet—that when the wreckage presently floats ashore he will get a good deal of his $500 back; and a dab at a time I will make up ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... and chestnut man, and (an innovation of 1914) the man in the white dress with a portable tin, selling pommes frites in grease-proof bags at a penny a time. But in Homerton, in addition to these, you have the man with the white-metal stand, selling a saveloy and a dab of pease-pudding for a penny, or boiled pig's trotters, or many kinds ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... him from stripping to his undershirt. The sun's rays, diffusing abnormal heat through the atmosphere, reflected piercingly upward from the water, had played havoc with him. His first act upon landing was to seat himself upon a flat-topped boulder and dab tenderly at his smarting face while his men hauled up the canoe. That in itself was a measure of his inefficiency, as inefficiency is measured in the North. The Chief Factor of a district large enough ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... old lady gave her eyes a last hasty dab with a dainty handkerchief and raised her head again, fighting for self-control. She was a quaint little figure, with soft grey hair drawn back smoothly from a gentle-featured face in which each wrinkle seemed ...
— The Case of the Registered Letter • Augusta Groner
... he is concerned, than in painting lilies white. A full-length portrait of the fair Lady Beatrix, too, must needs show a gay and vivid figure, superbly glittering across the vista of those stately days. Then, should Dab and Tab, the eminent critics, step up and demand that her eyes be a pale blue, and her stomacher higher around the neck? Do Dab and Tab expect to gather pears from peach-trees? Or, because their theory of dendrology convinces them ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... startin' in my hart, and my throte all hot and lumpy, thinkin' of ma and Danny an' all of them, and I noticed the teakettle just in time—it neaded skourin'. You bet I put a shine on it, and, of course, I couldn't dab tears on it and muss it up, so I had to wait. Mrs. M. duzn't talk to me. She has a morgage or a cancer I think botherin' her. Ma knowed a woman once, and everybuddy thot she was terrible cross cos she wouldn't talk at all hardly and when she died, they found she'd a tumult in her insides, ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... spite of the fact that she had passed her fifteenth birthday, Raymonde was the most irresponsible creature in the world. She looked it. Her face was as round and smooth as an infant's, with an absurd little dab of a nose, a mouth with baby dimples at the corners, and small white teeth that seemed more like first than second ones, and dark eyes which, when they did not happen to be twinkling, were capable of putting on a bewitching innocence of expression calculated to deceive almost ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... it, face downwards, on a piece of fine white flannel; then dip a piece of very stiff new organdie muslin into water, take it out again almost immediately and wring it slightly, so that no drops may fall from it, and then dab the wrong side of the lace all over with this pad of damp muslin and iron it with a hot iron which should be moved slowly forwards so that the moisture which the organdie has imparted to the lace may evaporate slowly. Not until you are quite sure that the lace is ...
— Encyclopedia of Needlework • Therese de Dillmont
... run races around here without stakes," replied Bostil, with deep scorn. "An' what can you bet? Thet little dab of prize money is gone, an' wouldn't be enough to meet me. You're a strange one in these parts. I've pride an' reputation to uphold. You brag of racin' with me—an' you a beggarly rider! ... You wouldn't have them clothes an' boots if my girl ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... not have to wait long. Not far to the north in the hard blue sky suddenly appeared a little dab of woolly white. Another showed in the east. They showed all about, and grew and grew in size until they became great, over-toppling, blending mountains, a new and mysterious world against the sky. Then came a darkening of the mass. The ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... Mr. B.,—"sit down, and wet your whistle, my piper! I say, egad! you're the piper that played before Moses! Had you there, Dab. Dab, get a fresh bottle of Burgundy for Mr. Hoskins." And before he knew where he was, there was Gus for the first time in his life drinking Clos-Vougeot. Gus said he had never tasted Bergamy before, ...
— The History of Samuel Titmarsh - and the Great Hoggarty Diamond • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the medicine man. "But you're not the only one of your tribe that can speak English. Broken Feather himself's a dab hand at it, so I hear. A clever scoundrel is Broken Feather. Togged you out like a Paleface and sent you into this reservation to spy around and find out how many braves and warriors we've got, how many ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton
... and crushing, it is ready to be worked up into domestic and other utensils. Squatted upon the ground, the potter places in her lap a small basket, wood, or pottery base, upon which she places a "dab" of clay. This she thumbs and pats, until it forms the basis of the new vessel. Then another piece of clay is rapidly rolled between her hands, until it is in the form of along rope. This rope is then coiled around the edge of the base already made, pressed ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... the weeniest little dab of rouge," she declared, "and it is really necessary, because I want to get rid of the ...
— Anna the Adventuress • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... necktie, dripping, from the bottom of the jar. "That's sucked up the very last drop, sir. Hold still, sir, and let me lay this just on the top, and as soon as you begins to feel it too warm I will take it away and hang it up to dry. I won't dab the place with the handkerchy, because it will feel cooler if you let ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... Rosas had promulgated his edict. My friend described to me how Rosas placed several of his rough police at the doors of every church, and any lady who did not exhibit the obligatory red bow on her black dress (in Spanish-speaking countries the women always go to Mass in black), received a dab of pitch on her cheek, on to which the policeman clapped a rosette of red paper. She told it all so graphically that I could almost see the stream of frightened, black-clad women issuing from the church, whilst their husbands and lovers stood expectantly below (South American ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... young man raved in three languages, but Emma Campbell flatly refused either to be in "slaveryment" or in the "nekked rind." Visions of herself being caught and painted bare-legged, with a trifling little dab of an apron tied around her waist even as one ties a bit of ribbon around the cat's neck, and of this scandal being ferreted out by the deacons, sisters, and brethren, of the Mount Zion Baptist Church in Riverton, South Carolina, haunted her and made her projeck ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... and roar, An' stump an' stamp about the vloor, An' swing, an' slap, an' slam the door! He don't put down a thing, But he do dab, an' dash, an' ding It down, till ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes
... water over her face, hands, and feet. No soap is required, no towel—the sun is shining and will soon dry everything in sight. Next comes the tooth-brushing act, when a smooth stick takes the place of a brush, and "Kolynos" or "Colgate" is replaced by a dab of powdered charcoal. Arul combs her hair only for life's great events, such as a wedding or a festival, and changes her clothes so seldom that it is better form ...
— Lighted to Lighten: The Hope of India • Alice B. Van Doren
... have to deal with a fellow like that; he thinks he's a dab at business, and goes about with the black ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... warning of it, luckily. I was up pretty early this morning and was just about to leave the house, when a dab of snow—a couple of tons, maybe—came down and knocked off my chimney. I knew what that meant, and I didn't waste much time, you may be sure, in getting out. I grabbed my rifle and ran for it. I was hardly out ...
— The Boys of Crawford's Basin - The Story of a Mountain Ranch in the Early Days of Colorado • Sidford F. Hamp
... going to do, Nurse Jane?" asked Uncle Wiggily Longears, the rabbit gentleman, as he saw the muskrat lady housekeeper going out in the kitchen one morning, with an apron on, and a dab of white flour on the end ...
— Uncle Wiggily and Old Mother Hubbard - Adventures of the Rabbit Gentleman with the Mother Goose Characters • Howard R. Garis
... What I am afraid of is a war. I had a little dab of it in the Black Hawk trouble. But a war between these states would shake the earth. I have two boys, you know. Sarah worries about it. Everybody's beginning to live in ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... this, as indeed on most other occasions, the artist had paid more attention to verisimilitude and less to mere vague harmonies and so forth, but as he was assured by that intelligent young Hillary that this method was all the Go at present, and that his friend Lucas was recognized as a rising Dab at it. That at least is how he retailed the ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... up the glasses, adding an appreciative extra dab with the magnanimity of the victor, ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... such thing. Another time in a newly whitewashed room, a toy or some small article of furniture would be hung on the wall and the children would have to fetch it without touching the wall. When the child who fetches it comes back, if he has failed ever so little to fulfil the conditions, a dab of white on the brim of his cap, the tip of his shoe, the flap of his coat or his sleeve, will betray ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... lamentations, and is composing melancholy verses upon the departure of Mademoiselle Mimi, who, I hear, has thrown him over. Well, for my part, I too, regret the loss of that young woman. She was a dab hand at making coffee, which is the beverage of serious minds. But I trust that Rodolphe will console himself, and soon get ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... A dab of ice-cream was deposited in a glass, and with a pewter spoon handed to Ben. He raised the spoon to his mouth, but alas! the mixture was not quite so tempting to the taste as to the eye and the pocket. It might be ice-cream, but there was an indescribable flavor about ...
— Ben, the Luggage Boy; - or, Among the Wharves • Horatio Alger
... taste; three new spuds, of which the largest is about the size of an ordinary hen's egg, the smallest that of a bantam's, and the middle one in between, and which eat soggy and have no taste to speak of, save that they are a trifle bitter; a dab of unhealthy-looking green something, which might be either cabbage leaves or turnip-tops, and a glass of water. The whole mess is lukewarm, including the water—it would all be better cold. Tea: A thin slice of the aforesaid alleged ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... able to make his escape without accompanying his two companions to the music-hall attached to the restaurant, and which he already knew by reputation as one of the lowest entertainments in London. "You two play," said Gus, "and I'll mark. You'll have to give Jack points, Tom, you know, you're such a dab." ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... blind, though he would never confess it—who dabbled in oil-painting, and let the boy watch his methods. How he would twirl his dirty brush round and dab down a lump of Prussian blue, imagining it to be sepia, hastily correcting it a moment afterwards with a lump of lake, and then say chuckling to himself: 'By Gode, dat is fine!—dat is very nearly a good purple. ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... finished if you say he is all right," answered the man, smiling as he put the least tiny dab more of varnish on the Donkey's back. "Shall I set him on the shelf to dry, so you may soon take him down to Earth for some lucky ...
— The Story of a Nodding Donkey • Laura Lee Hope
... me; it's not likely otherwise, for he's a dab at arithmetic. I asked the Doctor to let me see the book, but he wouldn't; and of course I couldn't tell him what I thought, and it would have been no use if ...
— Holiday Tales • Florence Wilford
... Ribble, dibble, dibble, dab! Some people have the gift of gab! Some people have no tongues at all To trip them up ...
— Happy Jack • Thornton Burgess
... of his shack walls and then cut his own back to pay an old grudge against the other man. Another fellow rushed in here gesticulating complaint, who was literally soaked in blood. We had had our experience and so sending for an interpreter, we soused this fellow into a bathtub. Every dab came off and there was ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... 'A little dab out, as Sibby calls it,' said Lance. 'It's my puggery. Ever since it fell overboard it has been a disgrace to human nature, so I have been washing it, and now I've ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... drawing patterns, may easily be made in the following manner. Mix and smooth some lamp-black and sweet oil, with a piece of flannel. Cover a sheet or two of large writing paper with this mixture, then dab the paper dry with a rag of fine linen, and prepare it for future use by putting the black side on another sheet of paper, and fastening the corners together with a small pin. When wanted to draw, lay the pattern on the back of the black paper, ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... was the urgency of going back that confronted her. She had come down in the morning to find her breakfast laid in just the way she liked it—tea, a soft-boiled egg, buttered toast, and, as a special temptation to a capricious appetite, a dab of marmalade. She sat down to the table unwillingly, sipping at the tea and nibbling at the toast, but leaving the egg and the marmalade untouched. In her mother's bustling to and fro she felt the long-delayed protest in the atmosphere. It came while her mother was crossing the room to ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... little in contemplation of the quaint wood-cut representing the arrival of this lady at Brockhurst. Clothed in a bottle-green bodice—very generously decolletee, her head adorned by a portentous erection of coronet and feathers, a sanguine dab of colour on her cheek, she craned a skinny neck out of the window of the family coach. Apparently she was engaged in directing the movements of persons—presumably footmen—clad in canary-coloured coats ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... feel called upon to make for her abrupt reversion to the first principles of her sex. The sobs ceased entirely. I experienced the sharp joy of relaxation. Her dainty lace handkerchief found employment. First she would dab it cautiously in one eye, then the other, after which she would scrutinise its crumpled surface with most extraordinary interest. At least a dozen times she repeated this puzzling operation. What in the world was ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... whom rumour asserts that he has lent immense sums of Guatemalan money, and the approach of a Marquis makes him palpitate with emotion. But he is a profoundly miserable man. Of that I am assured. It amuses me when I meet him in pompous society to address him lightly as "DAB," and remind him of the dear old Balham days, and the huge amount of bird's-eye we used to smoke together. For his motto now is, "Delenda est Balhamia"—I speak of course figuratively—and half-crown havannahs have usurped the place of the honest briar. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 11, 1891 • Various
... the blue-jackets of the service are usually distinguished by; but he was a veritable old salt, or "shell- back," none the less, sniffing of the ocean all over, and having his face seamed with those little venous streaks of pink (as if he indulged in a dab of rouge on the sly occasionally) which variegate the tanned countenances of men exposed to all the rigours of the elements, and who encounter with an equal mind the freezing blast of the frozen sea or the blazing ...
— Tom Finch's Monkey - and How he Dined with the Admiral • John C. Hutcheson
... lodge with odours of its frying. We would lie down to sleep content in a thick fishy, paraffin-y, dripping-y atmosphere. When I came home I could not think what the delicious smell was in a certain street. Then my imagination struck out a picture—Grimers laboriously frying a dab over ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... from an old chap as lives close by us,' said Chippy. 'He's a reg'lar dab 'and at fishin', an' I've been with him many a time to carry his basket an' things. He rigged me up wi' these when I told 'im about our trip, an' I know wot to do becos I've seen him at it often ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... unintentional.' And again, 'As to my meals, I can say that I was always careful to see that no one else would take a thing before I served myself; and I believe as to the kind of my food, a bit of cold endings of a dab at breakfast, and a scrap of mackerel at dinner, are the only things that diverged from the strict rule of simplicity.' 'I am obliged to confess,' he notes, 'that in my intercourse with the Supreme Being, I am be come more and ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... for several days, were put in their places, and the great steam engines and windlasses, which had been ready as long a time, were set in motion. And, as the house began to move upon its course, it almost missed a parting dab from the brush of a painter who was at ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton
... curate, and "a certain Admiral Baldwin, the most deplorable-looking personage you can imagine: his face the colour of mahogany, rough and rugged to the last degree, all lines and wrinkles, nine grey hairs of a side, and nothing but a dab of ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... the other side and hop in." Phil watched him in the rear-view mirror and noted the hasty dab at moist eyes. It seemed like a significant giveaway, but he couldn't imagine why. "Get your ...
— The Short Life • Francis Donovan
... with a sub-space energizer big enough to get it into sub-space and return it to normal. Then there is a small propulsor unit with just enough energy to send it to the center of that mess. Then it returns to normal space smack dab in the center of the core asteroid. And when the asteroid matter and the trigger body matter try to occupy the same space at the same time.... Watch it ...
— Jack of No Trades • Charles Cottrell
... with great celerity and adroitness. Sometimes they clipped off a sample of the sheep, but that is customary with shearers, and they don't mind it; they don't even mind it as much as the sheep. They dab a splotch of sheep-dip on the place and go ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... brush smear it evenly over with a paste made of arrowroot, taking care not to have more than just enough to cover it without leaving any patches. Place it gently on the cardboard, holding it for the purpose by two opposite angles, and with a silk handkerchief dab it gently, beginning in the middle, and work any little superfluity of the paste towards the edges, when it will be gradually pressed out. The whole may be placed in a press, or under a pile ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 232, April 8, 1854 • Various
... once for mending bicycles; and I used to stand about at the door, as if I had just returned from a ride; and when fellows came in, with a nut loose or something, I'd begin talking with them while Bertie tightened it. Then, when THEY weren't looking, I'd dab the business end of a darning-needle, so, just plump into their tires; and of course, as soon as they went off, they were back again in a minute to get a puncture ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... roughest wind or driving rain can tear them apart. Gray, coming in dirty and tired in the evening, after a long day's work in the hayfield or carting manure, was never too tired, nor for the matter of that too dirty, to take the baby, and let it dab its fat hands on his face, or claw at his grizzled whiskers or slobber open-mouthed ...
— Zoe • Evelyn Whitaker
... utilized any but fresh-water fish, the Scandinavians, at a date probably less remote however, did not hesitate to brave the ocean. The kitchen-middings contain numerous remains of fish, amongst which those of the mackerel, the dab, and the herring are the most numerous. There, too, we meet with relics of the cod, which never approaches the coast, and must always be sought by the ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... "you must remember that the beggars were Ghazees; they're hard to stop. Then, our men were worn out and had been sniped every night for the last week or two. However, the bugler's the key to my explanation; I'll put this dab of cigar ash here to represent him. This bishop's Bertram, and you can judge by the distance whether the fellow could have heard the order to blow, 'Cease fire,' through the row ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... shops, dropping a word to a workman here and there, the man addressed looked up cheerfully and made a furtive dab at the brown paper cap, and Richard returned the salute smilingly; but he was sad within. "The foolish fellows," he said to himself, "they are throwing away a full loaf and are likely to get none at all." Giles and two or three of the ancients were squaring a block of ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... better!" said Euphemia. "Now we know what Nature is. We are sitting right down in her lap, and she is cuddling us up. Isn't that sky lovely? Oh! I think this is perfectly splendid," said she, making a little dab at her face,—"if it wasn't ...
— Rudder Grange • Frank R. Stockton
... wishing tho' a dab,— To wish such harm to any Knight would urge ye? Yet he, a Knight, had taken up a Crab, And thump'd to death, with it, ...
— Broad Grins • George Colman, the Younger
... from a blank to a mirror of vistas—and the boy's pupils became deeply hungry. He was not only looking. He was seeing. His gaze took in the way the fingers held the brushes; the manner of mixing the pigments, the detail of method. Sometimes, when he saw a brush dab into a color whose use he did not at once understand, he would catch his breath anxiously, then nod silently to himself as the blending vindicated the choice. He did not know it, but his eye for color was as instinctively true ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... I'm mighty near froze. Taos nights in November has a heap of things in common with them Artic regions we hears of, where them fur-lined sports goes in pursoot of that North Pole. Bein' froze, an' mebby from an over-dab of nose-paint, I never saveys about this yere Spanish Bill meetin' up with me that a-way ontil later. But by what the barkeep says, he drug me into the Tub of Blood an' ...
— Wolfville • Alfred Henry Lewis
... called a facial, from which process she would emerge looking pinker and creamier than ever. Lil knew when camisoles were edged with filet, and when with Irish. Instinctively she sensed when taffeta was to be superseded by foulard. The contents of her scented bureau drawers needed only a dab of whipped cream on top to look as if they might have been eaten ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... move your tusk a little nearer, please, and I'll show you how to begin." My father wet the brush in the pool, squeezed on a dab of tooth paste, and scrubbed very hard in one tiny spot. Then he told the rhinoceros to wash it off, and when the pool was calm again, he told the rhinoceros to look in the water and see how white the little spot was. It was hard to see ...
— My Father's Dragon • Ruth Stiles Gannett
... she wiped a dab of flour from her nose and proceeded to concoct the icing for Blanche Remington's wedding cake, "don't you think my business venture ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... with sandals, another pair of stockings to cover my arms, chalked face and neck, with peaked eyebrows and neat little spots of red on the cheekbones and tip of the chin. If you feel inclined to be angelic, you might run up with your paint-box at the last minute, and dab on my joints." ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... I kin stay free till night, anyhow," said Aun' Suke, pausing in her work to make a dab at a little darky with her wooden spoon sceptre. "Firs' Marse Scoville whirl in en say I free; den old miss whirl in en say I ain'; now conies de gin'ral ob de hull lot en I'se free agin. Wat's ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... and quite unaccountably pleasing. It is ever so much easier than drawing things—"anyone can do it," as the advertisement people say—and the work is so much more substantial in its effects. Technical questions arise. In moulding a head, do you take a lump and fine it down, or do you dab on the features after the main knob ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... subject of fritters. When will English housekeepers grasp the idea of frying? They cannot get beyond a dab of grease or butter in a frying-pan. The bath of boiling oil seems to be beyond them, or at any rate a degree of civilisation that has not yet passed beyond the limit of the fried-fish shop. The oil will do over and over again, and in the end is undoubtedly cheaper than the dab of grease or butter ...
— Cassell's Vegetarian Cookery - A Manual Of Cheap And Wholesome Diet • A. G. Payne
... marvellous creatures, when they are once brought to understand that they are men,—not beasts! One will take a few words and harmonize them into a song or a verse that clings to the world for ever; another will mix a few paints and dab a brush in them, and give you a picture that generation after generation shall flock to see. It is what is called genius,—and genius is a sort of miracle. Yet I think it is fostered by climate a good deal,—the further north, the less ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... allowanced: a pint of corn meal and a salt herring is the allowance, or in lieu of the herring a "dab" of fat meat of about the same value. I have known the sour milk, and clauber to be served out to the hands, when there was an abundance of milk on the plantation. This is a ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... to get out, and once out you are miserable until you get back again. On one bank stretches a row of rookeries—a maze of hanging clothes, fish-nets, balconies hooded by awnings and topped by nondescript chimneys of all sizes and patterns, with here and there a dab of vermilion and light red, the whole brilliant against a china-blue sky. On the other is the long brick wall of the garden—soggy, begrimed, streaked with moss and lichen in bands of black-green and yellow ochre, over which ...
— Outdoor Sketching - Four Talks Given before the Art Institute of Chicago; The Scammon Lectures, 1914 • Francis Hopkinson Smith
... and more beautiful will they be. If on the old Thornbush moon old Herschel with his reflector could see a town-house two hundred feet long, on the Brick Moon young Herschel will be able to see a dab of mortar a foot and a half long, if he wants to. And people without the reflector, with their opera-glasses, will be able to see sufficiently well." And to this they agreed: that eventually there must be two Brick Moons. Indeed, it were better that there should be four, as each must ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... tried to get up. On one cheek he had a dab of jelly and his hand and shirt front were covered with broth. The sight was such a comical one that the boys on the landing could not ...
— The Rover Boys on the Farm - or Last Days at Putnam Hall • Arthur M. Winfield (AKA Edward Stratemeyer)
... Dixie said, calmly, "but we won't argue about it. I'll tell you one thing, though, Sam Pitman, if this thing goes on—I say, if Joe is overworked like this any more—a single other time—and it comes to my knowledge, I'll take you smack-dab to court. I don't meddle in things that don't concern me, as a general thing, but I'll take this in hand ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... back to back Fished from the bridge for a pike or a jack. The first caught a tiddler, the second caught a crab, The third caught a winkle, the fourth caught a dab, The fifth caught a tadpole, the sixth caught an eel, And the seventh one caught ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, June 7, 1916 • Various
... the grand scale the laws which in less obtrusive form govern the whole aesthetic life of woman. Painting, for instance, dwindles in her hands into the "sketch;" the brown sands in the foreground, the blue wash of the sea, and the dab of rock behind. Not a very lofty or amusing thing, one would say at first sight; but, if one thinks of it, an eminently practical thing, rapid and easy of execution, not mewing the artist up in solitary studio, but lending itself gracefully ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... his work, he made rapid progress, and soon became an expert smith and metal worker. He displayed his skill especially in forging light ironwork; and a favourite job of his was the making of "Trivets" out of the solid, which only the "dab hands" of the shop could do, but which he threw off with great rapidity in first rate style. These "Trivets" were made out of Spanish iron bolts—rare stuff, which, though exceedingly tough, forged like wax under the hammer. Even at the close of his life, when he had ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... hanging around here, that's all I know. I kept at him." He made a little dab of his woodpecker beak. "But I couldn't find ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... five minutes after ten, with McKnight not yet in sight, Blobs knocked at the door, the double rap we had agreed upon, and on being admitted slipped in and quietly closed the door behind him. His eyes were glistening with excitement, and a purple dab of typewriter ink gave him a peculiarly villainous and ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... blazer was claret and mustard, my "stror" was a rainbow gone wrong; I ain't one who's ashamed of his colours, but likes 'em mixed middlingish strong. 'EMMY 'OPKINS, the fluffy-'aired daughter, a dab at a punt or canoe, Said I looked like a garden of dahlias, and showed up ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 15, 1891 • Various
... Bolingbroke, who professes he studied it. I dare swear you will sincerely believe him when you read his celebrated works. I have got them for you, and intend to bring them. Oime! l'huomo. propone, Dio dispone. I hope you won't think this dab of Italian, that slid involuntarily from my pen, an affectation like his Gallicisms, or a rebellion against Providence, in imitation of his lordship, who I never saw but once in my life: he then appeared in a corner of the ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... Jessie grew more and more nervous; but at length appeared Cecil, looking very schoolboyish, with a great dab of ink on ...
— Holiday Tales • Florence Wilford
... much of jotting down notes; Landy Spencer sat quietly, his face immobile; Adine Lough went to the window ostensibly to dab on make-up, but really to suppress smiles and stifle laughter. A man of importance—a bank receiver, an arm of the court—was being kidded and he ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney
... replied Penny unemotionally, as he helped carry the burden to the bed. "He'll be all right in a minute. I jabbed him under the ear. It doesn't hurt you much; just gives you a sort of a headache. Wet a towel and dab it on his face." ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour
... of trees. Heare they kindled a fire and provided what was necessary for their food. In this place they cutt off my hair in the front and upon the crowne of the head, and turning up the locks of the haire they dab'd mee with some thicke grease. So done, they brought me a looking-glasse. I viewing myselfe all in a pickle, smir'd with redde and black, covered with such a cappe, and locks tyed up with a peece of leather and stunked horridly, I could not but fall ...
— Voyages of Peter Esprit Radisson • Peter Esprit Radisson
... farm road too rough for a carriage, we passed through fields and hedgerows to an erection which looks too insignificant for such solemn use. Don't expect any ghastly details. A longish building of "wattle and dab," much like the northern farmhouses, a high roof, and chimneys resembling those of the "oast houses" in Kent, combine with the rural surroundings to suggest "farm buildings" rather than the "funeral pyre," and all that is horrible ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... fed, and then, with the Candy Rabbit in his pocket and slowly wheeling the empty barrow, Patrick made his way to Madeline's house. He knocked at the back door, and the cook, with a dab of flour on ...
— The Story of a Candy Rabbit • Laura Lee Hope
... Cousin Egbert warmly. "Mrs. Effie, she gets up about nine of them pictures, with nuts and grated eggs and scrambled tomatoes all over 'em, and nobody knowing what's what, and even when you strike one that tastes good they's only a dab of it and you mustn't ask for any more. When I go out to dinner, what I want is to have 'em say, 'Pass up your plate, Mr. Floud, for another piece of the steak and some potatoes, and have some more squash and help ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... man with the abnormalities of the Roman deity. "The figure," he tells us, "is squat, crouched, as it were, before its own attributes, with arms longer than a gorilla's. The head is of mud or wood rising conically to an almost pointed poll; a dab of clay represents the nose; the mouth is a gash from ear to ear. This deity almost fills a temple of dwarf thatch, open at the sides. ...Legba is of either sex, but rarely feminine.... In this point Legba differs from the classical ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... latter part of this scene; and when the curtain fell, people were so busy wiping their eyes that for a moment they forgot to applaud. That silent moment was more flattering than noise; and as Mrs Jo wiped the real tears off her sister's face, she said as solemnly as an unconscious dab of rouge ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... carried her handkerchief, now reduced to a wet dab, to her eyes, and went out with a ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... also an 'old cat' up stairs. And now I have here a character. WILL you sit down? Is it of a necessity that up and down you should walk and awaken the whole house? There!"—she had given him a vicious dab with her fan as he ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... scientist dipped his lead pencil into his open mouth so that he would be able to dab down first impressions the moment he turned his thick lenses ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... back into the car, joyously raffish as a pair of gipsies. She wiped a dab of mud from her cheek, and remarked with an earnestness and a naturalness which that Jeff Saxton who knew her so well would never have ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... but well brought up and industrious young man was Hamilton Morris, and he had not the least idea of the good in store for him for several months after Mrs. Kinzer decided to marry him to her daughter Miranda. But all was soon settled. Dab, of course, had nothing to do with the wedding arrangements, and Ham's share was somewhat contracted. Not but what he was at the Kinzer house a good deal; nor did any of the other girls tell Miranda how very much he was in the way. He could talk, however, ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... needful materials, the gunner and his assistants take their places, and the drummer is to beat a roll. The gunner cleans the piece carefully with a dry rammer, and in pulling out the said rammer gives a dab or two to the mouth of the piece to remove any dirt adhering." (At this point it was customary to make the sign of the cross and invoke the intercession ...
— Artillery Through the Ages - A Short Illustrated History of Cannon, Emphasizing Types Used in America • Albert Manucy
... way you ought to look," returned Patty. "Here, hold still till I put another dab ...
— When Patty Went to College • Jean Webster
... found the long pliant boughs and shoots of the indigenous Acacias a ready substitute for the purpose, and they used them for constructing the partitions and outer-walls of the early houses, by forming a "wattling" and daubing it with plaster or clay. (See Wattle-and-dab.) The trees thus received the name of Wattle-trees, quickly contracted to Wattle. Owing to its beautiful, golden, sweet-scented clusters of flowers, the Wattle is the favourite tree of the Australian poets and painters. The bark is very ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... man, and (an innovation of 1914) the man in the white dress with a portable tin, selling pommes frites in grease-proof bags at a penny a time. But in Homerton, in addition to these, you have the man with the white-metal stand, selling a saveloy and a dab of pease-pudding for a penny, or boiled pig's trotters, or many kinds ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... well as prose? I was a dab at verses myself. I recollect when I first joined, I used to write verses for the fellows in the regiment; and did some pretty things in that way. I was talking to my old friend General Hobbler about some lines I dashed off for him in the year 1806, when we were ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... so that we shall positively be furthering their wishes. Come, Jane; ain't I only wise in bringing my indiscretions to you to set right, since you are such a dab at getting ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... the fancy, sir,' says he, 'see these things, without referrin' to no books, by the light of Nature.' And next day we had a set-to with the gloves, and his verdict was 'Only just short of professional.' Those boys were delighted. I wonder how and when I became such a dab at it?" ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... girl?" whispered he; "but there, don't jump at conclusions. I have only had her in hand for a short time, but I am a real dab at starting a woman grandly, and it would be hard to find my equal in ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... more ugly by the tawdry dress and the blazing jewels with which she was covered. A line of yellow chalk drawn from her forehead to the tip of her nose (which was further ornamented by an immense glittering nose-ring), her eyelids painted bright red, and a large dab of the same color on her chin, showed she was not of the Mussulman, but the Brahmin faith—and of a very high caste; you could see that by her eyes. My mind was instantaneously made up as to ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and bubbles, Tufts of straw, sands, fragments, Buoyed hither from many moods, one contradicting another, From the storm, the long calm, the darkness, the swell, Musing, pondering, a breath, a briny tear, a dab of liquid or soil, Up just as much out of fathomless workings fermented and thrown, A limp blossom or two, torn, just as much over waves floating, drifted at random, Just as much for us that sobbing dirge ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... behind de big house and old massa come round through de quarters every mornin' and see how us niggers is. If us sick he call nuss. She old slavery woman. She come look at 'em. If dey bad sick dey send for de doctor. Us house all log house. Dey all dab with dirt 'tween de logs. Dey have dirt chimney make out of sticks and dab with mud. Dey [Transcriber's note: unfinished ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves. - Texas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... her own hat and the cloak which was to cover Bessie's white muslin for travelling, and eau-de-cologne wherewith to dab the tear-stained cheeks. "I'm coming with you, Bessie, to the station," she promised. ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... bring her," thought Tom, "for she fears nothing!" and he sealed the letter with a dab of black wax flattened by the impression of the woman's ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... because, poor man, he had outlived the times for which he was qualified; and, instead of the merriment and jocularity that his wily by- hand ways used to cause among his neighbours, the rising generation began to pick and dab at him, in such a manner, that, had he been much longer spared, it is to be feared he would not have been allowed to enjoy his earnings both with ease and honour. However, he got out of the world with some respect, and the ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... of the federal eagle; imagining, I presume, that her bosom has all the softness and snugness of an eider-down pillow. But she has no great tenderness, even in her best of moods, and, sooner or later,—oftener soon than late,—is apt to fling off her nestlings, with a scratch of her claw, a dab of her beak, or a rankling wound ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... fool!" he stated with conviction. "I meandered out to take a look around for her, and I didn't like the looks of that little dab of a saddle Conrad had put on Pat. You didn't see ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... 'A joke is a joke, if it tante carried too far, but this critter win be strangled, as sure as a gun, if he lays here splutterin' this way much longer.' So I jist gives the hoss a dab in the mouth, and made him git up; and then sais I, 'Prince,' sais I, for I know'd him by his beard, he had one exactly like one of the old saint's heads in an Eyetalian pictur, all dressed to a pint, so sais I, 'Prince,' and a plaguy ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... Dawson were working in the kitchen fixing the new range in place of the old one which they had taken out. They had been engaged on this job all day, and their hands and faces and clothes were covered with soot, which they had also contrived to smear and dab all over the surfaces of the doors and other woodwork in the room, much to the indignation of Crass and Slyme, who had to wash it all off before they could put on the ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... precision and delicacy, he proceeded to apply the cleansing agent to the cut; at the first dab the patient leapt back ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... cheese. "So-oftly, so-oftly, muster," drawled he; "do na go to ruffling it here. This shop be mine, and I be free-born Englishman. I'll stand aside for no swash-buckling rogue on my own ground. Come, now, what wilt thou o' the lad?—and speak thee fair, good muster, or thou'lt get a dab o' the red-hot shoe." As he spoke he gave the black tongs ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... way of celebration," Mac said, as he put a dab of shoe-blacking over a hole in his sock; "you having been restored to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That's the game, ...
— The After House • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the following in imitation of old English poetry, which, I imagine, I am a dab at. The measure is unmeasureable; but it most resembles that beautiful ballad of the "Old and Young Courtier;" and in its feature of taking the extremes of two situations for just parallel, it resembles the old poetry certainly. If I could but stretch out the circumstances to twelve ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... was a staid and well-behaving Citizen who took home a dab of Steak, wrapped up in Brown Paper, nearly every Evening, and found his Excitement by working on the Puzzle Column ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade
... the waterfall where Burley had his den, are indeed far from "tedious." There is a tendency in Scott to exalt into mountains "his own grey hills," the bosses verdatres as Prosper Merimee called them, of the Border. But the horrors of such linns as that down which Hab Dab and Davie Dinn "dang ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... our boss" (dab or master) said Fil-de-Soie, seeing in Jacques Collin's eyes the vague glance a man sunk in despair casts on all ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... like winter hail, The whistle and they sigh, They shrill like cordage in a gale, Like mewing kittens cry; They hiss and spit, they purring come; Or, silent all a span, They rap, as on a slackened drum, The dab that kills a man. ...
— 'Hello, Soldier!' - Khaki Verse • Edward Dyson
... before, but I repeat it here, that there must never be too much sauce, however good, to any dish, and that the consistency is most important: it must be thick enough to mask a spoon, yet run from it freely. Nothing can be worse than a dab of white mush being served as sauce, unless it be a quantity of thin, milky soup floating on every plate. This is where the happy medium must be struck. It is perfectly easy to give exact proportions to produce certain degrees of thickness, and ...
— Choice Cookery • Catherine Owen
... something so heartening in the cheery voice that Georgina made one more dab at her eyes with the hem of her dress skirt, then dropped it and went out through the screen door to join him on the steps which led down into the garden. At first she was loath to confess the cause of her tears. She felt ashamed of being caught ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... I was not a-goin' to fire into him, so I gave the frigate a dig wi' my heels—tho' I'd got no irons on 'em—an' tried to shove up alongside of a fat young cow as was skylarkin' on ahead. As we went past the bull he made a vicious dab wi' his horn, and caught the frigate on her flank—right abaft the mizzen chains, like. Whew! you should ha' seen what a sheer she made right away to starboard! If it hadn't bin that I was on the ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... must remember that the beggars were Ghazees; they're hard to stop. Then, our men were worn out and had been sniped every night for the last week or two. However, the bugler's the key to my explanation; I'll put this dab of cigar ash here to represent him. This bishop's Bertram, and you can judge by the distance whether the fellow could have heard the order to blow, 'Cease fire,' through the row ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... of it, luckily. I was up pretty early this morning and was just about to leave the house, when a dab of snow—a couple of tons, maybe—came down and knocked off my chimney. I knew what that meant, and I didn't waste much time, you may be sure, in getting out. I grabbed my rifle and ran for it. I was hardly out of my door when the roar began, and you may guess how I ran then. I had reached ...
— The Boys of Crawford's Basin - The Story of a Mountain Ranch in the Early Days of Colorado • Sidford F. Hamp
... the kitchen with her apron on dishing up the wedding supper. Well might the Sycamore Ridge Weekly Banner declare that the "tables groaned with good things." There were not merely a little piddling dish of salad, a bite of cake, and a dab of ice-cream. There were turkey and potatoes and vegetables and fruit and bread and cake and pudding and pie—four kinds of pie, mark you—and preserves, and "Won't you please, Mrs. Culpepper, try some of that piccalilli?" and "Oh, Mrs. Ward, ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... instructor would stand over him and tell him in a dozen words just exactly what entries to make in a customer's passbook. Porter would stare into oblivion during the lesson and when it was done make a dab at his ink-pot, enter up a cheque as credit, cross it out and make it a debit, then reverse the entry—all before Watson could interfere. The Bonehead was not slow; in fact, he was too rapid—but his swiftness ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... haven't and just you tell us right out what it is without any more fooling," and Rex made a playful dab at his friend ...
— Two Boys and a Fortune • Matthew White, Jr.
... are called here, chattering away in the trees in groups of four or five. They are a species of grakle, and are lively and intelligent birds, some of them possessing a power of imitating human speech equal to any of the parrot tribe. They are very peculiar looking, grey in the body, with a black dab on the head, and a large bright yellow wattle just behind the eye. We pass the "miners" unmolested, for the minister tells me they are "no good" if you want eating, whilst as specimens they are ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... decorations; were studying with extraordinary crudeness of realism. Everything that was not conventional ornament or type was portrait; and portrait in which the scanty technical means of the artist, every meagre line and thin dab of colour, every timid stroke of brush or of pencil, went towards the merciless delineation not merely of a body but of a soul. And the greater the artist, the more cruel the portrait: cruellest in ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... Vistors—really don't want visitors,' she said; 'little repose—and all that sort of thing—is what I quire. No odious brutes must proach me till I've shaken off this numbness;' and in a grisly resumption of her coquettish ways, she made a dab at the Major with her fan, but overset Mr Dombey's breakfast cup instead, which was in ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... Curll:[300] 'Behold that rival here! The race by vigour, not by vaunts is won; So take the hindmost Hell.' He said, and run. 60 Swift as a bard the bailiff leaves behind, He left huge Lintot, and out-stripp'd the wind. As when a dab-chick waddles through the copse On feet and wings, and flies, and wades, and hops: So labouring on, with shoulders, hands, and head, Wide as a wind-mill all his figure spread, With arms expanded Bernard rows his state, And ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... window a blackbird hopped down upon the grass and took a tentative dab or two at the first slug he came across; but it was really too early for breakfast for a good hour yet, so he flew up again into a bush and preened his feathers, which had been discomposed by the limited accommodation of the night. Now he was on the topmost twig, and Winsome saw ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... himself if a bee had been buzzing about his nose as it did about mine," said Nancy, and, giving a vicious dab at the pictured features, she drew a bee perched on the end of Gran'ther Wattles's nose. "Here now are all the gray hairs he hath," she added, making three little scratches above ...
— The Puritan Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... neist, wi' bleth'rin' gab, Wha speeches wove like ony wab; O' ilk ane's corn aye took a dab, And a' for a fee; Accounts he owed through a' the toun, And tradesmen's tongues nae mair could drown; But now he thought to clout his ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... of the Lobster, I hear him complain, That hypnotic suggestion is on me again; I was mesmerised once and behold, since that time, I have yielded myself to suggestions of crime: I have compassed the death of an innocent "dab," And attempted ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 19, 1891 • Various
... all through her handkerchief, which she was using to dab her eyes; of Longstreet she never for an instant lost sight. She saw the eagerness in his eyes and knew that it was an eagerness to believe in her. She saw Helen's anger and contempt; she saw Carr's black looks; she saw, too, how Howard kept his eyes always on Helen's face, ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... answer for a moment. He seemed very much occupied in buttering a piece of roll—trying to get the little dab of yellow in the exact center of the white portion. Then, when it was arranged to his ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele
... after dabbing his fat head for some time— and it smokes to such an extent that he seems to light his pocket- handkerchief at it, which smokes, too, after every dab—"to pursue the subject we are endeavouring with our lowly gifts to improve, let us in a spirit of love inquire what is that Terewth to which I have alluded. For, my young friends," suddenly addressing the 'prentices and Guster, to ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... baffled young man raved in three languages, but Emma Campbell flatly refused either to be in "slaveryment" or in the "nekked rind." Visions of herself being caught and painted bare-legged, with a trifling little dab of an apron tied around her waist even as one ties a bit of ribbon around the cat's neck, and of this scandal being ferreted out by the deacons, sisters, and brethren, of the Mount Zion Baptist Church in Riverton, South Carolina, haunted her and ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... bunch of foraging sled-dogs that belonged to the next cabin. Also he saw something else that made him close the door hurriedly and dash to the stove. The frying-pan, still hot from the moose-meat and bacon, he put back on the front lid. Into the frying-pan he put a generous dab of butter, then reached for an egg, which he broke and dropped spluttering into the pan. As he reached for a second egg, Shorty gained his side and clutched his arm ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... though none of the things went together properly. We had delicious young chicken—quite babies they were, poor dears—fried with cream; and wreathed all round our plates in a semicircle were a quantity of tiny dishes. Each one had a big dab of something different in it; mashed potatoes, succotash, green peas, a kind of vegetable marrow to which they gave the unworthy name of "squash," raw tomatoes, sweet green pickles, preserved strawberries, ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... for the law, A dunce at syntax, but a dab at law, One happy christmas laid upon the shelf His cap and gown, and stores of learned pelf. With all the deathless bards of Greece and Rome, To spend a fortnight at his uncle's home. Arriv'd, and pass'd the usual how d'ye do's, Inquiries ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... herself, rather dreading the apology she would feel called upon to make for her abrupt reversion to the first principles of her sex. The sobs ceased entirely. I experienced the sharp joy of relaxation. Her dainty lace handkerchief found employment. First she would dab it cautiously in one eye, then the other, after which she would scrutinise its crumpled surface with most extraordinary interest. At least a dozen times she repeated this puzzling operation. What in the world was she looking for? To this ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... barked intimidatingly at those that came closest, bristling his neck and making a ferocious simulation of an efficient protector of the white god who stood beside him. And after each such warning, he would softly dab his cool damp muzzle against the ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... into shape; which is done by chopping the clods until they are sufficiently fine, and then drawing the earth round the foot until it forms a heap round the projected leg of the laborer like a mole hill, and nearly as high as the knee; he then draws out his foot, flattens the top of the hill by a dab with the flat part of the hoe, and advances forward to the next hill in the same manner, until the whole piece of ground is prepared. The center of these hills are in this manner guessed by the eye; and in most instances they ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... soap is required, no towel—the sun is shining and will soon dry everything in sight. Next comes the tooth-brushing act, when a smooth stick takes the place of a brush, and "Kolynos" or "Colgate" is replaced by a dab of powdered charcoal. Arul combs her hair only for life's great events, such as a wedding or a festival, and changes her clothes so seldom that it is better form not to ...
— Lighted to Lighten: The Hope of India • Alice B. Van Doren
... moment the "Swallow" was running rapidly around a sandy point, jutting into the bay from the highest mound on the bar, not half a mile from the light-house, and only twice as far from the low, wooden roof of the "wrecking station," where, as Dab had explained to his guests, the life-boats and other apparatus were kept safely housed. The piles of drifted sand had for some time prevented the brightest eyes on board the "Swallow" from seeing anything to seaward; ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, October 1878, No. 12 • Various
... on this, so the pack pony was unloaded. It now being near midday it was decided to wait for dinner before pressing on. A meal was a "dab" down there and the boys had fallen naturally into the vernacular of the ...
— The Pony Rider Boys with the Texas Rangers • Frank Gee Patchin
... understood that I do so in no sense as expressing Mr. Bumpkin's present condition. He had risen from the English peasantry, and was what is usually termed a "self-made man." He was born in a little hut consisting of "wattle and dab," and as soon as he could make himself heard was sent into the fields to "mind the birds." Early in the November mornings, immediately after the winter sowings, he would be seen with his little bag of brown bread round his neck, trudging along with a merry whistle, as happy as if he had been ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... or some such thing. Another time in a newly whitewashed room, a toy or some small article of furniture would be hung on the wall and the children would have to fetch it without touching the wall. When the child who fetches it comes back, if he has failed ever so little to fulfil the conditions, a dab of white on the brim of his cap, the tip of his shoe, the flap of his coat or his sleeve, will betray his ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... might know somethin' about him. I doesn't, only I'm a dab at what's called in Ireland fizzyognomy, an? I don't like the looks of him. Why, bless ye, I knows a feller by the cut of his jib directly. I could have taken my davy, now, that you were a sly, clever sort o' chap, even before I was introduced ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... but the effect of which every one welcomed with the profoundest relief. He was the regimental medical officer, a tall, slight man, with a keen eye, a pleasant face crowned by a topknot of flaming hair, and with a little dab of hair of like colour upon his upper lip, which he fondly cherished, as an important item in ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... Of course there was soon a deficiency of the better articles in the Department, the Army Commissary at Hilton Head declaring that we used up more candles and sugar than any regiment; so we have got to draw soldier's rations again, a few candles, a little dab of sugar, a big hunk of salt food, and hard biscuit. They can be swapped for duck and chickens, but what a ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... new garment, and says, O, if she only had the dressing of me! Then she gets up and limps and hops across the room to where I stand before the glass, and puts a pin here and a ribbon there, and gives my hair (which she has dressed herself) a little dab, to make it lie differently, and then scrambles back to her sofa, and knocks her lame ankle against something, and lies there groaning and enjoying herself like a martyr. On days when she thinks she is never going to get well, she says she doesn't know why she ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... sad and sordid and sloppy and unsavory as the so-called gay life of any other city with a lesser reputation for gay life and gay livers. A scrap of the gristle end of the New York Tenderloin; a suggestion of a certain part of New Orleans; a short cross section of the Levee, in Chicago; a dab of the Barbary Coast of San Francisco in its old, unexpurgated days; a touch of Piccadilly Circus in London, after midnight, with a top dressing of Gehenna the Unblest—it had seemed to us a compound of these ingredients, with a distinctive savor of what was essentially Gallic permeating ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... irritable insect it positively trembled. Here was that woman moving—actually going to get up—confound her! He struck the canvas a hasty violet-black dab. For the landscape needed it. It was too pale—greys flowing into lavenders, and one star or a white gull suspended just so—too pale as usual. The critics would say it was too pale, for he was an unknown man exhibiting obscurely, ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... hard-shell, middle-class environment, prevented him from stripping to his undershirt. The sun's rays, diffusing abnormal heat through the atmosphere, reflected piercingly upward from the water, had played havoc with him. His first act upon landing was to seat himself upon a flat-topped boulder and dab tenderly at his smarting face while his men hauled up the canoe. That in itself was a measure of his inefficiency, as inefficiency is measured in the North. The Chief Factor of a district large enough to embrace a European kingdom, traveling in state from post to ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... old drawing-master!—a German—half blind, though he would never confess it—who dabbled in oil-painting, and let the boy watch his methods. How he would twirl his dirty brush round and dab down a lump of Prussian blue, imagining it to be sepia, hastily correcting it a moment afterwards with a lump of lake, and then say chuckling to himself: 'By Gode, dat is fine!—dat is very nearly a good purple. Fenwick, my boy, ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Bill discovers me I'm mighty near froze. Taos nights in November has a heap of things in common with them Artic regions we hears of, where them fur-lined sports goes in pursoot of that North Pole. Bein' froze, an' mebby from an over-dab of nose-paint, I never saveys about this yere Spanish Bill meetin' up with me that a-way ontil later. But by what the barkeep says, he drug me into the Tub of Blood an' allows ...
— Wolfville • Alfred Henry Lewis
... had a frame along the top, with a scraper fastened to it. And what do you think again? He began scraping in all the conch-shells he could see that had what looked like a dab of mud or a ...
— Lord Dolphin • Harriet A. Cheever
... breeze, but soon fell into the Doldrums. A dead calm, and nothing to do but kill time. Dodd had put down Neptune: that old blackguard could no longer row out on the ship's port side and board her on the starboard, pretending to come from ocean's depths; and shave the novices with a rusty hoop and dab a soapy brush in their mouths. But champagne popped, the sexes flirted, and the sailors span fathomless yarns, and danced rattling hornpipes, fiddled to by the grave Fullalove. " If there is a thing I can dew, it's fiddle," said ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... knocker was devoted entirely to the menial occupation of announcing, by a single dab, or a variation of raps, the desire of persons on the door-step to communicate with the occupants of the interior of a mansion. Modern genius has elevated it into a source of refined pleasure and practical humour, affording at the same time employment to the artisan, excitement ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... dinner now, that we saw Master Sam throwing sticks and stones at Dame Frugal's ducks, for the sake of seeing them waddle; and then, when they got to the pond, he sent his dog in after them to bark and frighten them out of their wits. And as I came by, nothing would serve him but throwing a great dab of mud all over the sleeve of my coat. So I said, "Why, Master Sam, you need not have done that; I did nothing to offend you; and however amusing you may think it to insult poor people, I assure you it is very wicked, and what no good person in the ...
— The Life and Perambulations of a Mouse • Dorothy Kilner
... a long time finding that for which she was searching among the clothes hanging on a row of nails, and Susie, rolling her eyes in that direction, was sure, very sure, that she saw Teacher dab at her lashes with the frilly ruffle of a petticoat ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... talks more," she replied. "Last week two travelers in the cloth line were here—such clever chaps who told such jokes in the evening, that I fairly cried with laughing; and he stood there like a dab fish ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... me, carried her handkerchief, now reduced to a wet dab, to her eyes, and went out with ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... gave a dab with her beak at Betty's pink comb, and made it bleed. And though she said after that she did not mean to hurt her, that did not heal the ...
— Dick and His Cat and Other Tales • Various
... well give up the trip. With the little dab I would have I could do nothing. Oh, I wanted to throw it in his face!" and a fresh burst of sobs ...
— The Hero of Hill House • Mable Hale
... that I do not forgive it to the great Lord Viscount Bolingbroke, who professes he studied it. I dare swear you will sincerely believe him when you read his celebrated works. I have got them for you, and intend to bring them. Oime! l'huomo. propone, Dio dispone. I hope you won't think this dab of Italian, that slid involuntarily from my pen, an affectation like his Gallicisms, or a rebellion against Providence, in imitation of his lordship, who I never saw but once in my life: he then appeared in a corner of ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... alarm and begun to teeter around, Kenny in an interval of frantic excitement would not have been forced to fish him out of the stream by his coattails. He considered always that he saved the old man's life. Nor had he meant to dab at him with the oar, thereby encouraging the unfortunate old chap to duck and misinterpret his obvious intention ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... snow had drifted in so that in places it was over six feet high. I ventured out and found that every exit but one from the Home was snowed up. We had therefore to dig ourselves out of the woodshed door and into the others from the outside. You make a dab with a shovel in the direction where you think you last saw the desired door before the storm, and trust the fates for results. Part of our roof has blown off and our chimney is in a ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... an 'old cat' up stairs. And now I have here a character. WILL you sit down? Is it of a necessity that up and down you should walk and awaken the whole house? There!"—she had given him a vicious dab with her fan as he ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... 103; meanness, insignificance (unimportance) 643; mediocrity, moderation. small quantity, modicum, trace, hint, minimum; vanishing point; material point, atom, particle, molecule, corpuscle, point, speck, dot, mote, jot, iota, ace; minutiae, details; look, thought, idea, soupcon, dab, dight[obs3], whit, tittle, shade, shadow; spark, scintilla, gleam; touch, cast; grain, scruple, granule, globule, minim, sup, sip, sop, spice, drop, droplet, sprinkling, dash, morceau[obs3], screed, smack, tinge, tincture; inch, patch, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... of one egg and two tablespoons of milk together; wet each square well with the mixture, lay one raisin in the centre (after the seed has been removed from it), sprinkle thickly with sugar and cinnamon mixed together, then put a small dab of butter on top. Catch the four corners of each square together, so that the inside is protected. Lay the pocket books, not too closely together, in a greased pan and set aside to rise. When well risen bake in a moderately hot oven until ...
— The International Jewish Cook Book • Florence Kreisler Greenbaum
... critic, what if I, By way of joke, pull out your eye, And holding up the fragment, cry, 'Ha! ha! that men such fools should be! Behold this shapeless Dab!—and he Who own'd it, fancied it could see!' The joke were mighty analytic, But should you like it, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... one ounce; fluid potash, one drachm. Shake well together, and then add rose water, one ounce; pure water, six ounces. Mix. Rub the pimples or blotches for some minutes with a rough towel, and then dab them with ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... after a while he began to feel very lonely. He'd no relations, and what friends he'd had in the old days had disappeared. So he got him a dog—this fool, a little white scrap of a dog with a black patch." The terrier recognized his name and made a dab at the firm chin. "Steady! Well, yes—you're right. It was a great move. For the little white dog was really a fairy prince in disguise—such a pretty disguise—and straightway led the fool into ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... down, and cannot fail to be interesting if he comes as near to telling the truth about himself as he can. And he will tell the truth in spite of himself, for his facts and his fictions will work loyally together for the protection of the reader; each fact and each fiction will be a dab of paint, each will fall in its right place, and together they will paint his portrait; not the portrait he thinks they are painting, but his real portrait, the inside of him, the soul of him, his character. Without intending to lie he will lie ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... stumble upon a trick of the You-know-me-Alfred sort, what one might call the Attabuoyant style. If all you want is a suggestion as to some honest way of growing rich, the doughnut industry is not yet overcrowded; and people will stand in line to pay twenty-two cents for a dab of ice-cream smeared with ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... he said, pointing to the pumpkin, "there is the 'arth, and here is the tar-pot—just mark down the position of your island of Leaphigh, if you please, according to the best accounts your academy has of the matter. Make a dab here and there, if you happen to know of any rocks and shoals. After that, you can lay down the island where you were captured, giving a general idee of its headlands and of the ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... again in the rocking-chair. The bed had not been made. The room was in disorder. She had not troubled to dress herself, but wore a dirty dressing-gown, and her hair was tied in a sluttish knot. She had given her face a dab with a wet towel, but it was all swollen and creased with crying. She ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... determined than the average has been too much for the wind, or the patience, of most of the subscribers. One only has never been beaten, the Marquess of S——, but then he was always in condition; a dab hand at every athletic sport, extremely active, and gifted with a "calmness," as well as a nerve, which few ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... gentle push of the nose against his back, said: "There's your bed, and there are your bedfellows. So in with you, my stout one, and make yourself comfortable." As he still hesitated, the bearess brought him a soft dab of her paw on his back with a somewhat stronger push, which left him no alternative but to turn in as he was bidden and make the best of it. Then, humming a low, lullaby sort of a tune, Meg went 'round the bed, softly pushing up and smoothing ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady
... side, a generous helping of well-cooked meat, with bread or potatoes, and the simplest relishes, or a royally fat pudding overrun with brandy sauce; each or either can put it all over a splash of this, a dab of that, a slab of something else, set lonesomely on a separate plate and reckoned a meal—in courses. Courses are all well enough—they have my warm heart when they come "in the picture." But when they are mostly "The substance of things hoped ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams
... little. "Don't you palm off any luncheon on us! That sounds like a dab of salad and a dab of sauce and two peas in a platter and a prayer for dinner to hurry up and come around! Cook us some grub, old girl—lots of it. Coffee and bacon and flour gravy and spuds. We'd rather wait a few minutes longer and get a square meal, wouldn't we, boys? Make yourselves ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... a time, O my Best Beloved, there was a Whale, and he ate fishes. He ate the starfish and the garfish, and the crab and the dab, and the plaice and the dace, and the skate and his mate, and the mackereel and the pickereel, and the really truly twirly-whirly eel. All the fishes he could find in all the sea he ate with his mouth—so! Till at last there was only one small fish left in all the sea, and he was ...
— Just So Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... may need several months. Look at the leaves every day, and when one seems to be ready slip a piece of cardboard under it and shake it about gently in fresh cold water. If any green stuff remains, dab it with a soft brush and then put it into another basin of clean water. A fine needle can be used to take away any small and obstinate pieces of green. It is now a skeleton and must be bleached according to the following directions:—Pour ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... she feels a guy, she's going to look it. Why, it took those two girls just six minutes to transfer that goddess rig from Miss Preston to Miss Townsend. She didn't have time to powder, and she didn't have time to dab on paint, and, besides, she had had no rehearsals. That's ...
— The Mermaid of Druid Lake and Other Stories • Charles Weathers Bump
... with an importunate stranger who elbowed, before Caterham came. He walked out of a shadow towards the middle of the platform, the most insignificant little pigmy, away there in the distance, a little black figure with a pink dab for a face,—in profile one saw his quite distinctive aquiline nose—a little figure that trailed after it most inexplicably—a cheer. A cheer it was that began away there and grew and spread. A little spluttering of voices about the platform ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... But what I cannot understand is why the curtains are not taken down. Or they might be made shorter. It is such a queer noise that it gets on one's nerves. And now, Johanna, give me the little cape and put just a little dab of powder on my forehead. Or, better still, take the 'refresher' from my traveling bag—Ah, that is fine and refreshes me. Now I am ready to go over. He is still there, isn't he, or has he ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... "Now, put this dab upon the wagon," Johnson said, referring to the bed, and it was carried down by the brothers, and the dead man's ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... up her arms. Mickey submitted to a hug and a little cold dab on his forehead, counted his money, locked the door and ran. On the car he sat in deep thought, then suddenly sniggered aloud. He had achieved the next installment of the doggerel to which every night Peaches insisted on having a ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... Roger did not neglect his exercises; taking particular care to keep the toes well turned in when lunging ten times backwards. (Exercise 17.) Once, to his joy, the girl whom he had first met outside his country cottage came in and had her simple lunch of Smilopat (ninepence the dab) at his shop. That evening he lunged twelve times to ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne
... a treat to Dab to watch while the new carpets were put down, one after another, and then to see how much at home and comfortable the furniture looked as it was moved into its ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various
... two men were fishing for their breakfast, for there was famine in the settlement, and the few pioneers left in it were kept alive on a diet of roast flathead. On the beach three boats were drawn up out of reach of the tide, and looking behind him Jack counted twelve huts and one store of wattle-and-dab. The store had been built to hold the goods of the Port Albert Company. It was in charge of John Campbell, and contained a quantity of axes, tomahawks, saddles and bridles, a grindstone, some shot and powder, two double-barrelled guns, nails and hammers, and a few other ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... red clay moulded into an imitation man with the abnormalities of the Roman deity. "The figure," he tells us, "is squat, crouched, as it were, before its own attributes, with arms longer than a gorilla's. The head is of mud or wood rising conically to an almost pointed poll; a dab of clay represents the nose; the mouth is a gash from ear to ear. This deity almost fills a temple of dwarf thatch, open at the sides. ...Legba is of either sex, but rarely feminine.... In this point Legba differs from the classical Pan and Priapus, but the idea ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... all very well, my dear—but you must reflect, that, etc., etc., et cetera"—each et cetera a dab of wet wool, taking out more and more stiffening and color, until the beautiful project hangs, a limp rag, on her hands, a forlorn wreck over which ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... being now in his work, he made rapid progress, and soon became an expert smith and metal worker. He displayed his skill especially in forging light ironwork; and a favourite job of his was the making of "Trivets" out of the solid, which only the "dab hands" of the shop could do, but which he threw off with great rapidity in first rate style. These "Trivets" were made out of Spanish iron bolts—rare stuff, which, though exceedingly tough, forged like wax under the ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... we don't run races around here without stakes," replied Bostil, with deep scorn. "An' what can you bet? Thet little dab of prize money is gone, an' wouldn't be enough to meet me. You're a strange one in these parts. I've pride an' reputation to uphold. You brag of racin' with me—an' you a beggarly rider! ... You wouldn't have them clothes an' boots if my girl ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... interrupted with an announcement that Mr. Carson was waiting downstairs. Tony flew from the phone to dab powder on her nose. ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... with a superior grin. 'Not with these 'ere modern craft. They works with horizontal rudders, sort o' fins along the side. Blime, G 2 can pop up and down mighty nigh as quick as a dab chick.' ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges
... British winters, and, alighting at a farm road too rough for a carriage, we passed through fields and hedgerows to an erection which looks too insignificant for such solemn use. Don't expect any ghastly details. A longish building of "wattle and dab," much like the northern farmhouses, a high roof, and chimneys resembling those of the "oast houses" in Kent, combine with the rural surroundings to suggest "farm buildings" rather than the "funeral pyre," and all that is horrible ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... laughed heartily at this evidence of Mrs. Popham's celerity, while Osh, as pleased as possible, gave one dab with his paste brush ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... went down the stairs Miss Carter dropped behind the others. So did Bob Strahan. As he waited for her he saw her dab her eyes with her handkerchief and he put out his ...
— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett
... announced, Polly happened to be talking, or trying to talk, to one of the "poky" gentlemen whom Fan had introduced. He took Miss Milton down, of course, put her in a corner, and having served her to a dab of ice and one macaroon, he devoted himself to his own supper with such interest, that Polly would have fared badly, if Tom had not come ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... winked the medicine man. "But you're not the only one of your tribe that can speak English. Broken Feather himself's a dab hand at it, so I hear. A clever scoundrel is Broken Feather. Togged you out like a Paleface and sent you into this reservation to spy around and find out how many braves and warriors we've got, how many war-horses we possess, ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton
... ceremony than a less noble youth would have ventured upon. "Come, don't keep us all in suspense. I must hear you, don't you know; all the other fellows have heard you. So, please, get over the preliminaries, and let's come to the music. I'm awfully fond of music, especially singing. I'm a dab at ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... I'll raise my bet. I mentioned a sack of flour and a side of bacon. I'll take a can of coffee and a dab of sugar. St. Peter'll appreciate that. 'Tis well to keep on the right side of the old man. Some of us may have occasion to knock at his gate before the summer is over. You've heard of my new ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... request the town to make him a present of them, as he found nothing in his capital that could compare with their beauty; he received this answer: "Bous quets meste de noustes coos et de noustes bees; mei per co qui es Deus pialars diu temple, aquets que son di Diu, dab eig quep at bejats." "You may dispose of our hearts and our goods at your will; as for the columns, they belong to God; manage ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... call it in action against saboteurs. One flew to pieces in mid-air. Sabotage. Carrying critical stuff. One crashed on take-off, carrying irreplaceable instruments. Somebody'd put a detonator in a servo-motor. And one froze in its landing glide and flew smack-dab into its landing field. They had to scrape it up. When this ship got a major overhaul two weeks ago, we flew it with our fingers crossed for four trips running. Seems to be all right, though. We gave it the works. But I ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... have big hearts and women little ones? But we are good packers. We put a lot in 'em) I could be terribly funny, if only women were going to read this. They'd understand. They know all about men. They'd go up-stairs and put on a negligee and get six baby pillows and dab a little cold cream around their eyes and then lie down on the couch and read, and they would all think I must ...
— 'Oh, Well, You Know How Women Are!' AND 'Isn't That Just Like a Man!' • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... —"This is pleasant! To be quite alone here (dab), surrounded by these magnificent works (dab, dab, dab), and everything so quiet too—nothing to disturb one." (Dab) after a pause. "I wonder what Jones and Robinson are doing (dab, splash)—lying at full length in a gondola, I dare say—smoking (dab), I ...
— The Foreign Tour of Messrs. Brown, Jones and Robinson • Richard Doyle
... out, and then I would know where I am at. Hang it if I know now. You all say that your sister is singular and that she distresses your father, and you"—addressing Imogen—"say that she must be in that house. You are the only one who does make a dab at speaking out; I will say that much for you. Now, if she is in that house, what in thunder ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Mr Mann,' said Mr Smithson, 'but I'm a practical scene-painter. I was painting scenery before you were born. I was three years old in my father's workshop when I put my first dab of paint on for the Valley of Diamonds for Drury Lane ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... boss" (dab or master) said Fil-de-Soie, seeing in Jacques Collin's eyes the vague glance a man sunk in despair casts on ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... ordered that dressing-case specially on his behalf. He said he thought one of the housemaids would have some sticking-plaster. He was very sorry he was needed downstairs, but he would tell one of the housemaids. I continued to dab and to curse. The blood flowed less. I showed great spirit. I vowed Braxton should not prevent me from ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... all needful materials, the gunner and his assistants take their places, and the drummer is to beat a roll. The gunner cleans the piece carefully with a dry rammer, and in pulling out the said rammer gives a dab or two to the mouth of the piece to remove any dirt adhering." (At this point it was customary to make the sign of the cross and invoke the ...
— Artillery Through the Ages - A Short Illustrated History of Cannon, Emphasizing Types Used in America • Albert Manucy
... It was the most absurd kiss. I don't believe he'd ever kissed a woman in his life before. I threw my head back, and it was a sort of slidy, pecking dab, just on the end of the chin—here." Mrs. Hauksbee tapped her masculine little chin with her fan. "Then, of course, I was furiously angry, and told him that he was no gentleman, and I was sorry I'd ever met him, and so on. He was crushed so easily that I couldn't be very ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... came a loud knock at the door; a single, solid dab of the knocker which Polton seemed to recognize, for ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... laughing a little. "Don't you palm off any luncheon on us! That sounds like a dab of salad and a dab of sauce and two peas in a platter and a prayer for dinner to hurry up and come around! Cook us some grub, old girl—lots of it. Coffee and bacon and flour gravy and spuds. We'd rather wait a few minutes longer and get a square meal, wouldn't ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... an old cushion, or something soft, cone side downwards. If you decide to have a glass over your picture, you must get a piece beforehand at a glazier's, about the same size as the picture. Rub if bright with a leather, put a small dab of glue in each corner, and place ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... threat, but she was rapidly undeceived. Two inquisitors, seizing her by the arms, held her tightly in her chair, while several others smeared soap over her face and stuck on feathers which they took out of a cushion. She would have screamed, but every time she opened her mouth to do so she received a dab of soap upon her tongue. When they considered her countenance was sufficiently ornamented, they presented her with a looking-glass ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... like it's all right. But it ain't. It's hurtin' him like a knife dug into him. He don't dast strike a real blow with that left of his. But it hurts, anyway. Just to move it or not move it hurts, an' every little dab-feint that I'm too wise to guard, knowin' there's no weight behind, why them little dab-touches on that poor thumb goes right to the heart of him, an' hurts worse than a thousand boils or a thousand knockouts—just ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... saw the most primitive specimen of a smoking apparatus probably ever invented. It consisted of a dab of mud stuck in a hole of a tree, about five feet from the ground. Two small sticks, inserted in this from above and below and then withdrawn, had evidently served to form the smoke passage; while the bowl as evidently had been fashioned by the simple impression of ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... was playing into his hands. His four-days' acquaintance with the bard had been sufficient to show him that the man was there forty ways when it came to writing about love. You could open his collected works almost anywhere and shut your eyes and dab down your finger on some red-hot passage. A proposal of marriage is a thing which it is rather difficult to bring neatly into the ordinary run of conversation. It wants leading up to. But, if you once start reading poetry, especially Tennyson's, almost anything ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... know exactly how many minutes I can dress in and just when I must get into the carriage. Can you give me five minutes to lie down quite flat and dab my forehead with eau de cologne? Five minutes, Jane. But ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... but one dab of paint would make a man of a ghost, and it Mackintosh of a herring-net—to refuse it I am full. I ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... age. Such a face I had never seen. The first sight of it made me suck in my breath as if I had touched the edge of a razor. The bridge half of his nose had gone, or he had never had it, and the lower half was stuck like a dab of putty midway between mouth and eyebrows. His little, beady eyes were set in large, shallow sockets, giving him an owl-like appearance. A mouth originally large enough, and thickly lipped like a negro's, had been extended, as ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... of the bailie, because, poor man, he had outlived the times for which he was qualified; and, instead of the merriment and jocularity that his wily by- hand ways used to cause among his neighbours, the rising generation began to pick and dab at him, in such a manner, that, had he been much longer spared, it is to be feared he would not have been allowed to enjoy his earnings both with ease and honour. However, he got out of the world with some ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... short-sighted endeavour to look closer; you could see his eyes, large and clear under the watery wash of his glasses. His features, slightly flattened, were laid quietly back on his composed, candid face; the dab of docked moustache rising up in it like a strange note of wonder, ...
— The Romantic • May Sinclair
... instance, excels at a plan or a title-page, another works away the body of the book, and a third is a dab at an index.[403-2] ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... arrived as a visitor. I was immediately hurried into the house, a whispering took place between Mr and Mrs Root, and the consequence was, that I was bustled up into the bedroom, and my second-best clothes, which I then had on, were changed for the best, and, with a supererogatory dab with a wet towel over my face, I was brought down, and, my little heart playing like a pair of castanets against my ribs, I was delivered into the ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... compliment to us," said his mother-in-law elect, "that you condescend to do that simple work yourself, instead of letting your men dab all that ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... not—heavy!" Barnabas explained, a little clumsily perhaps, for she fell silent at this, and stooped her head the better to dab tenderly at the cut above her eyebrow; also the ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... consciousness of his gun. Time and again he pictured himself taking sight at something grey that moved, and firing. His forefinger itched to press the trigger. He would take aim very carefully, he told himself; he pictured a dab of grey starting up from behind a grey tree trunk, and the sharp detonation of his rifle, and the dab of grey rolling among the ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... There!" and he withdrew the silk necktie, dripping, from the bottom of the jar. "That's sucked up the very last drop, sir. Hold still, sir, and let me lay this just on the top, and as soon as you begins to feel it too warm I will take it away and hang it up to dry. I won't dab the place with the handkerchy, because it will feel cooler if you ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... to-day—make it sixty, if you want to; make it a hundred million— it's no difference about a few millions one way or t'other. Well, now, you can see, yourself, that when you come to spread a little dab of people like that over these hundreds of billions of miles of American territory here in heaven, it is like scattering a ten-cent box of homoeopathic pills over the Great Sahara and expecting to find them again. You can't expect us to amount to anything in heaven, and we DON'T—now that is the ...
— Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven • Mark Twain
... egg and two tablespoons of milk together; wet each square well with the mixture, lay one raisin in the centre (after the seed has been removed from it), sprinkle thickly with sugar and cinnamon mixed together, then put a small dab of butter on top. Catch the four corners of each square together, so that the inside is protected. Lay the pocket books, not too closely together, in a greased pan and set aside to rise. When well risen bake in a moderately hot oven until well ...
— The International Jewish Cook Book • Florence Kreisler Greenbaum
... bicycles; and I used to stand about at the door, as if I had just returned from a ride; and when fellows came in, with a nut loose or something, I'd begin talking with them while Bertie tightened it. Then, when THEY weren't looking, I'd dab the business end of a darning-needle, so, just plump into their tires; and of course, as soon as they went off, they were back again in a minute to get a puncture mended! I call ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... his tail in token of understanding, without a shade of resentment, Michael lifted a paw and with a playful casual stroke, dab- like, brought its weight on the other's neck and rolled him, head-downward, over on the deck. Though he snarled wrathily, Michael turned away composedly and looked up ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... to rustle sufficient dry wood to keep the fire going. This diversity of interests certainly made him sit up and pay attention. At each instant he had to desert his flour-sack to rescue the coffee-pot, or to shift the kettle, or to dab hastily at the rice, or to stamp out the small brush, or to pile on more dry twigs. His movements were not graceful. They raised a scurry of dry bark, ashes, wood dust, twigs, leaves, and pine needles, a certain proportion of which found their way into the coffee, the rice, ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... his foot a hard blow against one of the stairs; and he would have needed to have had a heavy boot on to do it. I started up in bed and listened, as you may well suppose, not in the most tranquil state of mind, and then I heard an odd, gnawing sort of noise, and then another dab upon one of ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... "Northern Spies"; and last of all the snow-apples with their contrast of deep crimson outside and white flesh within. The windfalls covered the ground ready to the hand; and the branches bent under their burden. It was the season of apple-sauce with cinnamon, and baked apples with a dab of jelly where the core ought to be, and apple-tapioca and Brown Betty. And these tasted wondrous good, even to youngsters already gorged ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... finds for tact! He sees a grave-like bed of verbenas defacing the middle of a small greensward—a dab of rouge on a young cheek; a pert child doing all the talking. Whereupon he shrewdly pleads not for the sward but for the flowers, "You have those there to show off ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable
... woman running away as best her bulk allowed, casting glances that were half frightened, half triumphant, behind her; while Mark was sitting up, rubbing a bump on his forehead ruefully, and Lil Artha had taken out a handkerchief to dab at his ...
— Pathfinder - or, The Missing Tenderfoot • Alan Douglas
... Irving for me —I can't get up courage enough to talk about this misfortune myself, except to you, whom by good luck I haven't damaged yet—that when the wreckage presently floats ashore he will get a good deal of his $500 back; and a dab at a time I will make up to ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... was running rapidly around a sandy point, jutting into the bay from the highest mound on the bar, not half a mile from the light-house, and only twice as far from the low, wooden roof of the "wrecking station," where, as Dab had explained to his guests, the life-boats and other apparatus were kept safely housed. The piles of drifted sand had for some time prevented the brightest eyes on board the "Swallow" from seeing anything ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, October 1878, No. 12 • Various
... Monday it was the urgency of going back that confronted her. She had come down in the morning to find her breakfast laid in just the way she liked it—tea, a soft-boiled egg, buttered toast, and, as a special temptation to a capricious appetite, a dab of marmalade. She sat down to the table unwillingly, sipping at the tea and nibbling at the toast, but leaving the egg and the marmalade untouched. In her mother's bustling to and fro she felt the long-delayed protest in the atmosphere. It came while ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... contrast with the grey monotone of British winters, and, alighting at a farm road too rough for a carriage, we passed through fields and hedgerows to an erection which looks too insignificant for such solemn use. Don't expect any ghastly details. A longish building of "wattle and dab," much like the northern farmhouses, a high roof, and chimneys resembling those of the "oast houses" in Kent, combine with the rural surroundings to suggest "farm buildings" rather than the "funeral pyre," and all that is horrible is ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... back again. On one bank stretches a row of rookeries—a maze of hanging clothes, fish-nets, balconies hooded by awnings and topped by nondescript chimneys of all sizes and patterns, with here and there a dab of vermilion and light red, the whole brilliant against a china-blue sky. On the other is the long brick wall of the garden—soggy, begrimed, streaked with moss and lichen in bands of black-green and yellow ochre, over which mass and sway the great sycamores that Ziem loved, their lower ...
— Outdoor Sketching - Four Talks Given before the Art Institute of Chicago; The Scammon Lectures, 1914 • Francis Hopkinson Smith
... packing case, "is a saloon pistol, and will be exhibited in the museums of the next century as being the weapon with which the new era was inaugurated. Into the breech I place a Boxer cartridge, specialty provided for experimental purposes with a steel bullet. I aim point blank at the dab of red sealing wax upon the wall, which is four inches above the magnet. I am an absolutely dead shot. I fire. You will now advance, and satisfy yourself that the bullet is flattened upon the end of the magnet, after which you will apologise to ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... every week some horse more determined than the average has been too much for the wind, or the patience, of most of the subscribers. One only has never been beaten, the Marquess of S——, but then he was always in condition; a dab hand at every athletic sport, extremely active, and gifted with a "calmness," as well as a nerve, which few men of his ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... on his head a thick cloth cap, with its crown cotton-padded. But for this, which served as a helmet, the beak of the bird would have been into his skull, for at the first dab it struck right at ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... flesh painted upon his figures, and a good beginning made. "It was contrary to his habit to finish at one painting, and he used to say that a poet who improvises cannot hope to form pure verses." He would often produce a half-light with a rub of his finger, "or with a touch of the thumb he would dab a spot of dark pigment into some corner to strengthen it; or throw in a reddish stroke—a tear of blood so to speak—to break the parts ... in fact when finishing he painted more with his fingers than with his brush." He used to say, "White, red, and black, these are all the colours that a painter ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... explained before, but I repeat it here, that there must never be too much sauce, however good, to any dish, and that the consistency is most important: it must be thick enough to mask a spoon, yet run from it freely. Nothing can be worse than a dab of white mush being served as sauce, unless it be a quantity of thin, milky soup floating on every plate. This is where the happy medium must be struck. It is perfectly easy to give exact proportions to produce certain degrees of thickness, and this has been done in the chapters on ...
— Choice Cookery • Catherine Owen
... his own feather bed. Now I've got a suggestion about that; first principles bring us to the skin; fortify that, and the matter's done. How would it do to bile a big kittle full of tar, tallow, beeswax and injen rubber, with considerable wool, and dab the whole family once a week? The young'uns might be soused in it every Saturday night, and the nigger might fix the elderly folks with a whitewash brush. Then there wouldn't be no bother a washing your clothes or yourself, which last is an invention of the doctor ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... away the Fox crept into the churn and ate up the cream. So when the Goody came back and saw that, she fell into such a rage, that she snatched up the little morsel of the cream that was left, and threw it at the fox as he ran off, so that he got a dab of it on the end of his tail, and that's the reason why the fox has a white ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... backbone of subsistence as it were. A bowl of rich soup or chowder, with crackers on the side, a generous helping of well-cooked meat, with bread or potatoes, and the simplest relishes, or a royally fat pudding overrun with brandy sauce; each or either can put it all over a splash of this, a dab of that, a slab of something else, set lonesomely on a separate plate and reckoned a meal—in courses. Courses are all well enough—they have my warm heart when they come "in the picture." But when they are mostly "The substance ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams
... fine, and then drawing the earth round the foot until it forms a heap round the projected leg of the laborer like a mole hill, and nearly as high as the knee; he then draws out his foot, flattens the top of the hill by a dab with the flat part of the hoe, and advances forward to the next hill in the same manner, until the whole piece of ground is prepared. The center of these hills are in this manner guessed by the eye; and in most instances they approach near to lines of four feet one way, and three feet ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... is made by a dab of clay placed at right angles to the axis of the cylinder, at a distance from the bottom determined by the ordinary length of a cell. This wad is not a complete round; it is more crescent-shaped, leaving a circular space between ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... through a tolerably open sunlit part, full of growth of the most dazzling green. Now he neared the insect; now it dashed off again, and led him a tremendous chase, till, just as the doctor shouted to him to return, we saw him make a dab down with his hat ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... up the feast, Ay, nor feel queasy." Oh, such a life as he resolved to live, When he had learned it, When he had gathered all books had to give! Sooner, he spurned it. Image the whole, then execute the parts— Fancy the fabric 70 Quite, ere you build, ere steel strike fire from quartz, Ere mortar dab brick! ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... saying that the question was outside the sphere of my activities," he decided. "I should then proceed to add, as a private person, that a little dab on the left side would do ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... furniture would be hung on the wall and the children would have to fetch it without touching the wall. When the child who fetches it comes back, if he has failed ever so little to fulfil the conditions, a dab of white on the brim of his cap, the tip of his shoe, the flap of his coat or his sleeve, will betray his lack ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... quantity, modicum, trace, hint, minimum; vanishing point; material point, atom, particle, molecule, corpuscle, point, speck, dot, mote, jot, iota, ace; minutiae, details; look, thought, idea, soupcon, dab, dight[obs3], whit, tittle, shade, shadow; spark, scintilla, gleam; touch, cast; grain, scruple, granule, globule, minim, sup, sip, sop, spice, drop, droplet, sprinkling, dash, morceau[obs3], screed, smack, tinge, tincture; inch, patch, scantling, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... remember that the beggars were Ghazees; they're hard to stop. Then, our men were worn out and had been sniped every night for the last week or two. However, the bugler's the key to my explanation; I'll put this dab of cigar ash here to represent him. This bishop's Bertram, and you can judge by the distance whether the fellow could have heard the order to blow, 'Cease fire,' through the row that ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... feathers, fastened in the hair or tied round the arm, or stuck in the waist-belt of plaited hair; paint their bodies with a white paint or wash made from "Kopi" (gypsum similar to that found by the shores of salt lakes), with an occasional dab of red ochre (paint made from a sandstone impregnated with iron), and fix up their hair into a sort of mop bound back by bands of string. Thus bedecked and painted, and carrying their spears and boomerangs, they present ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... gave a great assenting dab at the fire, necessitating a prompt examination of all her gear to see if she ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... greatly concerned when they heard of Daisy's illness—in especial, Mr. Dove was concerned, and expressed himself willing to do all in his power for the sweet, pretty little lady. He said he knew a doctor of the name of Jones, who was a dab hand with children, and if the young ladies liked he would run round to Dr. Jones's house, and fetch ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... you want to buy her yourself," retorted Fanny, with a vicious dab of the soap in ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... of the kind, Miss Ross;' and Cyril jumped off the stile. 'I will carry him for you;' and Cyril hoisted him up on his arm, being rewarded by an affectionate dab on his nose ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... fresh-water fish, the Scandinavians, at a date probably less remote however, did not hesitate to brave the ocean. The kitchen-middings contain numerous remains of fish, amongst which those of the mackerel, the dab, and the herring are the most numerous. There, too, we meet with relics of the cod, which never approaches the coast, and must always be sought by the ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... if he wanted it?" cried Joseph, taking a dab of color on his palette and stirring it into the other colors without seeing what he did. "Is it likely ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... corrupting me! Say, didn't I make a mess of it this afternoon? I got about ten yards off the beach and just had to give up and pull back—and pull hard. Blessed if I didn't begin to wonder once if I'd make it! The fact is, Joel, I'm an awful dab at swimming. And I ought to be punched for letting you go out there ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... and she was such a little thing, after all. Whatever excitement there had been in the village died out as soon as it was known that the boys were safe; and then, too, Mrs. Lee found time to "wonder wot Dab Kinzer means to do wid all de money he ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... calm, and nothing to do but kill time. Dodd had put down Neptune: that old blackguard could no longer row out on the ship's port side and board her on the starboard, pretending to come from ocean's depths; and shave the novices with a rusty hoop and dab a soapy brush in their mouths. But champagne popped, the sexes flirted, and the sailors span fathomless yarns, and danced rattling hornpipes, fiddled to by the grave Fullalove. " If there is a thing I can dew, it's fiddle," said he. He and his friend, as he systematically called Vespasian, ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... wouldn't dare attempt to lift bodies so small for fear of mortally injuring them between thumb and forefinger). Into the patty-dish, so they could be readily located, were placed the bits of wire, the tiny fragments of silk gauze to serve as breech clouts, and a generous dab of termite-paste; and the two men stepped inside the glass dome to share the fate that, the night ...
— The Raid on the Termites • Paul Ernst
... that we shall positively be furthering their wishes. Come, Jane; ain't I only wise in bringing my indiscretions to you to set right, since you are such a dab at getting me ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... puffing like a tugboat. "To open a small account—two of 'em. Checks for collection," he announced. Tone and manner were breezily self-assertive; the president, from his desk, turned and looked. He indorsed, blotting with a swift dab, and a final fillip through the window. "Chicago, thirty-three hundred—credit to Britt & Stratton. Here's our signature. Denver, eight hundred, to private account H.E. Stratton. He'll be here next week. I'll bring him around and identify. Draw on this by Wednesday? Good! Gimme checkbook. Excuse ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... a small piece of clean washleather, which has an even, smooth surface. Let the color become nearly dry, then proceed to dab it all over with the washleather, held on the end of the finger, breathing on the slide when necessary, in order to keep ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892 • Various
... here, Judy," she complained as that indefatigable artist sat on the beach with her easel before her, in a blue work-apron, and with a dab of charcoal on ...
— Judy • Temple Bailey
... was up. His danger only nerved him to action, so he says. So he planted a dab of vermilion in his creature's mouth. The Italian spluttered and tried to wipe it off—evidently horribly surprised. And then—according to Harringay—there began a very remarkable struggle, Harringay splashing away with the red paint, and the picture wriggling about and wiping it off as fast ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... when Tom sat down to breakfast the cat rubbed up against him more vigorously than usual; but Tom, being bewildered between his expected gain in corn and the positive loss of his child's toe, kept never minding her, until the cat, with a sort of caterwauling growl, gave Tom a dab of her claws, that went clean through his leathers, and a little further. 'Wow!' says Tom, with a jump, clapping his hand on the part, and rubbing it, 'by this and that, you drew the blood out o' me,' says Tom; ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... in putting a dab of printer's ink on one of the drumsticks at the very last moment before the seance began. The result could not prove physically injurious to the Medium, who had challenged investigation, nor to any one in the circle. ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission
... call the Attabuoyant style. If all you want is a suggestion as to some honest way of growing rich, the doughnut industry is not yet overcrowded; and people will stand in line to pay twenty-two cents for a dab of ice-cream smeared ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... says Mr. B.,—"sit down, and wet your whistle, my piper! I say, egad! you're the piper that played before Moses! Had you there, Dab. Dab, get a fresh bottle of Burgundy for Mr. Hoskins." And before he knew where he was, there was Gus for the first time in his life drinking Clos-Vougeot. Gus said he had never tasted Bergamy before, at which the bailiff sneered, and told him ...
— The History of Samuel Titmarsh - and the Great Hoggarty Diamond • William Makepeace Thackeray
... dear lamb. The girls will all, eventually, put on; fill up"—Sylvia added a dab of clay to a doubtful curve—"but men, when they chip off from the approved design, look like nothing on ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... simply consists in a series of attempts on the part of the two opponents to spit on the tips of each others noses. At first, this cleanly interchange of saliva goes on slowly and deliberately—Socrates never measured the leap of a flea with more seriousness—but presently one receives a dab in the eye, another in the mouth. They begin to grow hot and angry. "I hit your nose," cries one. "No, it was my cheek!" replied the other. They draw a little nearer, in order to ascertain the truth by feeling; ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various
... foundation, lay it, face downwards, on a piece of fine white flannel; then dip a piece of very stiff new organdie muslin into water, take it out again almost immediately and wring it slightly, so that no drops may fall from it, and then dab the wrong side of the lace all over with this pad of damp muslin and iron it with a hot iron which should be moved slowly forwards so that the moisture which the organdie has imparted to the lace may evaporate slowly. Not until you are quite sure that the lace is ...
— Encyclopedia of Needlework • Therese de Dillmont
... declared. "You've found them both." He mounted to the porch, and shook her extended hand, cushioned with fat, and oddly damp and lifeless. He could see her countenance now—it was plaster white with insignificant features and rose like an amorphous column from a swollen throat, a nose like a dab of putty, eyes obscured ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... puff paste, you should take the greatest care to previously work it well on the paste-board or slab, to get out all the water and buttermilk, which very often remains in; when you have worked it well with a clean knife, dab it over with a soft cloth, and it is then ready to lay on your paste; do not make your paste over stiff before you put ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... go on! What have you stolen? A pin from Elise's pin cushion,—or some powder from her puff-box? Another dab on your nose would greatly improve your appearance,—if you ask me! It's as ...
— Patty's Social Season • Carolyn Wells
... is good, and so is Thackeray, And so's Jane Austen in her pretty way; Charles Dickens, too, has pleased me quite a lot, As also have both Stevenson and Scott. I like Dumas and Balzac, and I think Lord Byron quite a dab at spreading ink; But on the whole, at home, across the sea, The author I like ...
— Cobwebs from a Library Corner • John Kendrick Bangs
... breakfast, for there was famine in the settlement, and the few pioneers left in it were kept alive on a diet of roast flathead. On the beach three boats were drawn up out of reach of the tide, and looking behind him Jack counted twelve huts and one store of wattle-and-dab. The store had been built to hold the goods of the Port Albert Company. It was in charge of John Campbell, and contained a quantity of axes, tomahawks, saddles and bridles, a grindstone, some shot and powder, two double-barrelled guns, nails and hammers, and a few other articles, but there was ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... own hat and the cloak which was to cover Bessie's white muslin for travelling, and eau-de-cologne wherewith to dab the tear-stained cheeks. "I'm coming with you, Bessie, to the station," she promised. "Emily ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... the can and poured some out on a bit o' rag and told Bill to dab his face with it. Bill give a dab, and the next moment he rushed over with a scream and buried his head in a shirt what Simmons was wearing at the time and began to wipe his face with it. Then he left the flustered Simmons an' ...
— Light Freights • W. W. Jacobs
... (unimportance) 643; mediocrity, moderation. small quantity, modicum, trace, hint, minimum; vanishing point; material point, atom, particle, molecule, corpuscle, point, speck, dot, mote, jot, iota, ace; minutiae, details; look, thought, idea, soupcon, dab, dight^, whit, tittle, shade, shadow; spark, scintilla, gleam; touch, cast; grain, scruple, granule, globule, minim, sup, sip, sop, spice, drop, droplet, sprinkling, dash, morceau^, screed, smack, tinge, tincture; inch, patch, scantling, tatter, cantlet^, flitter, gobbet^, mite, bit, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... "tedious." There is a tendency in Scott to exalt into mountains "his own grey hills," the bosses verdatres as Prosper Merimee called them, of the Border. But the horrors of such linns as that down which Hab Dab and Davie Dinn "dang the deil" ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... cards, and pay their addresses to one another, and sup, and discuss each other's affairs! Take Mr. Bennet's reception of his sons-in-law. Take Sir Walter Elliot compassionating the navy and Admiral Baldwin—'nine grey hairs of a side, and nothing but a dab of powder at top—a wretched example of what a seafaring life can do, for men who are exposed to every climate and weather until they are not fit to be seen. It is a pity they are not knocked on the head at once, before they reach ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... in the linen closet and a hedgehog in the cellar. He had a cow with a calf too, and an old lame horse-twenty-five years of age—and chickens, and pigeons, and two lambs, and many other animals. But his favorite pets were Dab-Dab the duck, Jip the dog, Gub-Gub the baby pig, Polynesia the parrot, ...
— The Story of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... of Brownie, which were famous. Puddings for dinner had followed, and were now cooling in the dairy. Finally, the joint being in the oven, and vegetables prepared, the cook had compounded Jim's favourite cake, which was now baking; during which delicate operation, with a large dab of flour on her nose, the cook sat at the table, and wrote ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... carried out in the cabin. The work did not seem to him to be called for in such a hurry. What was the use of altering anything? It was a very good accommodation, spacious, well-distributed, on a rather old-fashioned plan, and with its decorations somewhat tarnished. But a dab of varnish, a touch of gilding here and there, was all that was necessary. As to comfort, it could not be improved by any alterations. He resented the notion of change; but he said dutifully that ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... dear sergeant, to show ye that I can return good for evil, allow me to fatch you a nice 'ot mutton chop!" "Oh-h-h-h-h!" groaned the sergeant, as though he would die. "Or perhaps you'd prefer a cut of boiled beef with yellow fat, and a dab of cabbage?" an alternative which was too powerful for the worthy citizen himself—for, like Sterne with his captive, he had drawn a picture that his own imagination could not sustain—and, in attempting to reach the side of the boat, he cascaded over the sergeant, and they rolled over ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... wearing a different motor-coat, the car bore a different number, and as I approached I noticed that the coronet and cipher had been obliterated by a dab of paint! ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux
... Cantle, with melancholy conviction. "Well, this is a bad night altogether for them that have done well in their time; and if I were ever such a dab at the hautboy or tenor-viol, I shouldn't have the heart to ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... you to be a very faithful and good friend, Drinkwater," said the artist, making a dab, and then leaning back in his chair with his head on one side to judge ...
— Will of the Mill • George Manville Fenn
... Fear held them mute. Alone, untaught to fear, Stood dauntless Curll:[300] 'Behold that rival here! The race by vigour, not by vaunts is won; So take the hindmost Hell.' He said, and run. 60 Swift as a bard the bailiff leaves behind, He left huge Lintot, and out-stripp'd the wind. As when a dab-chick waddles through the copse On feet and wings, and flies, and wades, and hops: So labouring on, with shoulders, hands, and head, Wide as a wind-mill all his figure spread, With arms expanded Bernard rows his state, And left-legg'd ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... destined for our hospitals at Vicksburg. The boat happened to make a temporary stop at Helena, and the ladies ascertained that there was at the hospitals there great need of sanitary supplies, so they donated us the bulk of their cargo. I will remark here that that little dab of currants was all the U.S. Sanitary stuff I consumed during my army service. I am not kicking; merely stating the fact. Those goods very properly went to the hospitals, and as my stay therein was brief, my share of the delicacies was consequently ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... man raved in three languages, but Emma Campbell flatly refused either to be in "slaveryment" or in the "nekked rind." Visions of herself being caught and painted bare-legged, with a trifling little dab of an apron tied around her waist even as one ties a bit of ribbon around the cat's neck, and of this scandal being ferreted out by the deacons, sisters, and brethren, of the Mount Zion Baptist Church in Riverton, South Carolina, haunted her and made her projeck ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... music, beautiful as it is, did not suit the occasion, for though the gaily attuned audience was visibly affected by the phrase, Et moi j'ai l'ame triste, they did not show more signs of emotion than by making a little dab at ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... every mile shining to the eye. I've seen pictures in my time, but never one that made a dab of paint look a mile deep. Besides, why draw a thing when you can lie on your back ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... one thing but locatin' an investment for it is another. I've kidded the old man a lot about the Maggie, but she's worth two thousand dollars if somebody'd spend a thousand on her inner works an' give her a dab o' paint an' some new fire hose an' ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... took place between Mr and Mrs Root, and the consequence was, that I was bustled up into the bedroom, and my second-best clothes, which I then had on, were changed for the best, and, with a supererogatory dab with a wet towel over my face, I was brought down, and, my little heart playing like a pair of castanets against my ribs, I was delivered into the tender ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... face I had never seen. The first sight of it made me suck in my breath as if I had touched the edge of a razor. The bridge half of his nose had gone, or he had never had it, and the lower half was stuck like a dab of putty midway between mouth and eyebrows. His little, beady eyes were set in large, shallow sockets, giving him an owl-like appearance. A mouth originally large enough, and thickly lipped like a negro's, had been ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... sort, what one might call the Attabuoyant style. If all you want is a suggestion as to some honest way of growing rich, the doughnut industry is not yet overcrowded; and people will stand in line to pay twenty-two cents for a dab of ice-cream smeared with a trickle ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... should we give it up? If we could pull through last winter and make a profit, we certainly ought to do better still this year, for we are all wiser, older, and stronger. It is fearfully hard on Katherine to be obliged to do the journeys, I know, but that can stop when I am a bit older, and more of a dab at ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... to Dab to watch while the new carpets were put down, one after another, and then to see how much at home and comfortable the furniture looked as it was moved into ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various
... gathered himself up and made a blind rush at his adversary, but was abruptly stopped by what Jeff called a "dab on the nose." Repeating the rush, Stumps was staggered by a plunging blow on the forehead, and he paused to breathe, gazing the while at his foe, who, though a smaller youth than himself, ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... Henry, he had on his head a thick cloth cap, with its crown cotton-padded. But for this, which served as a helmet, the beak of the bird would have been into his skull, for at the first dab it ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... and a good beginning made. "It was contrary to his habit to finish at one painting, and he used to say that a poet who improvises cannot hope to form pure verses." He would often produce a half-light with a rub of his finger, "or with a touch of the thumb he would dab a spot of dark pigment into some corner to strengthen it; or throw in a reddish stroke—a tear of blood so to speak—to break the parts ... in fact when finishing he painted more with his fingers than with ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... prevent it from burning, and trying to rustle sufficient dry wood to keep the fire going. This diversity of interests certainly made him sit up and pay attention. At each instant he had to desert his flour-sack to rescue the coffee-pot, or to shift the kettle, or to dab hastily at the rice, or to stamp out the small brush, or to pile on more dry twigs. His movements were not graceful. They raised a scurry of dry bark, ashes, wood dust, twigs, leaves, and pine needles, a certain proportion of which found ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... the churn and ate up the cream. So when the Goody came back and saw that, she fell into such a rage, that she snatched up the little morsel of the cream that was left, and threw it at the fox as he ran off, so that he got a dab of it on the end of his tail, and that's the reason why the fox has a white tip ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... his speaking unless spoken to. He could light a fire in a minute under the most unfavorable conditions and with the most unpromising material, made the best coffee to be tasted outside of a creole kitchen, was a "dab" at camp stews and roasts, groomed my horses (one of which he rode near me), washed my linen, and was never behind time. Occasionally, when camped near a house, he would obtain starch and flat-irons, and get up my extra shirt in a way to excite the envy of ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... telephone interrupted with an announcement that Mr. Carson was waiting downstairs. Tony flew from the phone to dab powder ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... breeches-maker and restorer, have so dealt with the Last Judgment that it is almost impossible to do it justice now. What Michelangelo intended by his scheme of colour is entirely lost. Not only did Daniele da Volterra, an execrable colourist, dab vividly tinted patches upon the modulated harmonies of flesh-tones painted by the master; but the whole surface has sunk into a bluish fog, deepening to something like lamp-black around the altar. Nevertheless, in its composition the fresco may still be studied; and after due inspection, ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... to do, Nurse Jane?" asked Uncle Wiggily Longears, the rabbit gentleman, as he saw the muskrat lady housekeeper going out in the kitchen one morning, with an apron on, and a dab of white flour on the ...
— Uncle Wiggily and Old Mother Hubbard - Adventures of the Rabbit Gentleman with the Mother Goose Characters • Howard R. Garis
... B.,—"sit down, and wet your whistle, my piper! I say, egad! you're the piper that played before Moses! Had you there, Dab. Dab, get a fresh bottle of Burgundy for Mr. Hoskins." And before he knew where he was, there was Gus for the first time in his life drinking Clos-Vougeot. Gus said he had never tasted Bergamy ...
— The History of Samuel Titmarsh - and the Great Hoggarty Diamond • William Makepeace Thackeray
... memory! do not conjure up The ghost of Sally Dab, the famous cook; Who gave me solid food, the cheering cup, And on her virtues, begg'd ...
— Poetic Sketches • Thomas Gent
... guess you'd call it in action against saboteurs. One flew to pieces in mid-air. Sabotage. Carrying critical stuff. One crashed on take-off, carrying irreplaceable instruments. Somebody'd put a detonator in a servo-motor. And one froze in its landing glide and flew smack-dab into its landing field. They had to scrape it up. When this ship got a major overhaul two weeks ago, we flew it with our fingers crossed for four trips running. Seems to be all right, though. We gave it the works. ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... young man, me an' a nigger, by de name ov Henry, wuz huntin' in an' old field. In dem days bear, deer, turkey, and squirrels wuz plentiful an' 'twant long befo' we had kilt all we could carry. As we wuz startin' home some monstrous thing riz up right smack dab in front ov us, not more'n 100 feet away. I asked Henry: "Black Boy, does yo' see whut I see?" an' Henry say, "Nigger I hopes yo' don't see whut I see, 'cause dey ain't no such man." But dere it stood, wid its sleeves gently flappin' ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Arkansas Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... these was Mr. Bryant, citizen and stationer, but not bookseller, save that he sold bibles, prayer-books and almanacks; for he seriously considered that the armorial bearings of the Stationers' Company displaying three books between a chevron, or something of that kind, for he was not a dab at heraldry, mystically and gravely set forth that no good citizen had occasion for more than three books, viz. bible, prayer-book and almanack. Mr. Bryant was a bachelor of some sixty years old or thereabouts. He had a snug little ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 493, June 11, 1831 • Various
... approach the daisy, the thistle, and the sweet briar pleasantly affected my European eyes. The villages are no longer moveable: the Kraal and wigwam are replaced by the Gambisa or bell- shaped hut of Middle Africa [9], circular cottages of holcus wattle, Covered with coarse dab and surmounted by a stiff, conical, thatch roof, above which appears the central supporting post, crowned with a gourd or ostrich egg. [10] Strong abbatis of thorns protects these settlements, which stud the hills in all directions: near most of them are clumps of tall ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... reverence for his ancestral land proves his to be, and so afraid of what I had done to him about the calf, and so hungry to see him, that by the time the apple-float came on the table I thought it would have to be fed to me by old Eph. Mother made it worse by remarking, as she put a lovely dab of thick cream right on ...
— Over Paradise Ridge - A Romance • Maria Thompson Daviess
... a piece of paper which follows the lines of one of the lower corners. So, upon the corresponding corner of the wood to be cut, I place this that represents the soundhole, exactly; and I dip a small stiff brush into lampblack, not too wet, rather dry than otherwise, and I dab on to the belly through the cut impression of the soundhole—then I reverse the paper, doing exactly the same at the other side of the wood. Of course, I know beforehand that the impressions will be anything ...
— Violin Making - 'The Strad' Library, No. IX. • Walter H. Mayson
... Harry Girdwood laughing, "for you put out the lights so suddenly that I couldn't find the string, and then I nearly dug the hook into his head as well as his wig; and as for the phosphorus, I gave him a dab with it upon ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng
... her disappointment over her spoiled chair. She was working away with a frown as she repaired the damage. At a suggestion from Bob that she finish the job she had started on him, Joy gave a dab with her brush and left a long streak across ...
— The Merriweather Girls and the Mystery of the Queen's Fan • Lizette M. Edholm
... that fifty million whites have died in America from the beginning up to to-day—make it sixty, if you want to; make it a hundred million— it's no difference about a few millions one way or t'other. Well, now, you can see, yourself, that when you come to spread a little dab of people like that over these hundreds of billions of miles of American territory here in heaven, it is like scattering a ten-cent box of homoeopathic pills over the Great Sahara and expecting to find ...
— Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven • Mark Twain
... dig among the olives.. Delicate little hooded women, heads of Artemis with the crown of Cybele, winged heads, or heads covered with the Phrygian cap, portrait-heads of girls or children, with their sharp profiles still perfect, and the last dab of the clay under the thumb of the artist, as clear and clean as when it was laid there ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... pedlarin'?" said old O'Beirne, "and he that took up wid larnin' and litherature he couldn't ha' tould you the price of a pinny loaf. Faix, man, if I was Maggie I'd just put a good dab of strong glue in your place behind the counter down-below, and stick you standing steady in it, for buyin' and sellin's all the notion you have in your head here ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... stories is to the effect that he once left a chore he was doing for his second "Marster's" wife, "stepped" to a nearby well to get a drink of water and, impelled by some strange, irresistible "power", "jes kep on walkin 'til he run slap-dab inter de Yankees", who corraled him and kept ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... her! She did not wish to meet strangers; she did not wish to go anywhere, above all she did not wish to eat. That evening, of all evenings in her life, she wished to be alone. However, accepted invitations are implied obligations and Mary, having adjusted the hat, gave her eyes a final dab with a handkerchief and cold water and hastened down to answer the ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... goose! do go on! What have you stolen? A pin from Elise's pin cushion,—or some powder from her puff-box? Another dab on your nose would greatly improve your appearance,—if you ask me! It's as red as ...
— Patty's Social Season • Carolyn Wells
... grey monotone of British winters, and, alighting at a farm road too rough for a carriage, we passed through fields and hedgerows to an erection which looks too insignificant for such solemn use. Don't expect any ghastly details. A longish building of "wattle and dab," much like the northern farmhouses, a high roof, and chimneys resembling those of the "oast houses" in Kent, combine with the rural surroundings to suggest "farm buildings" rather than the "funeral pyre," and all that is horrible is left ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... I hadn't ordered that dressing-case specially on his behalf. He said he thought one of the housemaids would have some sticking-plaster. He was very sorry he was needed downstairs, but he would tell one of the housemaids. I continued to dab and to curse. The blood flowed less. I showed great spirit. I vowed Braxton should not prevent me from going ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... colonists found the long pliant boughs and shoots of the indigenous Acacias a ready substitute for the purpose, and they used them for constructing the partitions and outer-walls of the early houses, by forming a "wattling" and daubing it with plaster or clay. (See Wattle-and-dab.) The trees thus received the name of Wattle-trees, quickly contracted to Wattle. Owing to its beautiful, golden, sweet-scented clusters of flowers, the Wattle is the favourite tree of the Australian poets and painters. The bark is very rich in tannin. (See Wattle-bark.) ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... load of wood. He was a man of the world, and knew all about the performance. After he had looked at the sketch, the children, and finally the mother, all came round my stool and had a good long look at my work. Even so the mother would not let the children dab their toes into my paints, or generally become a nuisance. For this unexpected manifestation of a sense of the fitness of things, I felt grateful to her, and, before I went away, found a way of recompensing the children for the sorrow they must have felt at ...
— A Visit to Java - With an Account of the Founding of Singapore • W. Basil Worsfold
... were so they are! It was the most absurd kiss. I don't believe he'd ever kissed a woman in his life before. I threw my head back, and it was a sort of slidy, pecking dab, just on the end of the chin here.' Mrs. Hauksbee tapped her masculine little chin with her fan. 'Then, of course, I was furiously angry, and told him that he was no gentleman, and I was sorry I'd ever met him, and so on. He was crushed so easily then ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... in my reflections anent the death of the bailie, because, poor man, he had outlived the times for which he was qualified; and, instead of the merriment and jocularity that his wily by- hand ways used to cause among his neighbours, the rising generation began to pick and dab at him, in such a manner, that, had he been much longer spared, it is to be feared he would not have been allowed to enjoy his earnings both with ease and honour. However, he got out of the world with some respect, and the matters of which ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... Mary was at the little door in the wall and had the bolts drawn back, and I was outside before I understood what had happened, listening to bolts being thrust back again, and my only consolation was the remembrance of a little dab at my lips as I passed through, as brief and unsatisfactory as the peck ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... LAMB is good, and so is Thackeray, And so's Jane Austen in her pretty way; Charles Dickens, too, has pleased me quite a lot, As also have both Stevenson and Scott. I like Dumas and Balzac, and I think Lord Byron quite a dab at spreading ink; But on the whole, at home, across the sea, The author I like best ...
— Cobwebs from a Library Corner • John Kendrick Bangs
... cowslips with Ruperta Bassett; and he had a canoe, which he carried to adjacent streams, however narrow, and paddled it with singular skill and vigor. A neighboring miller, suffering under drought, was heard to say, "There ain't water enough to float a duck; nought can swim but the dab-chicks and Muster Bassett." ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... to feel very lonely. He'd no relations, and what friends he'd had in the old days had disappeared. So he got him a dog—this fool, a little white scrap of a dog with a black patch." The terrier recognized his name and made a dab at the firm chin. "Steady! Well, yes—you're right. It was a great move. For the little white dog was really a fairy prince in disguise—such a pretty disguise—and straightway led the fool into Paradise. Indeed, they were so happy together, the fool and the dog, that, though no work came along, ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... same! Only the other day, an actress was saying that what she was most proud of in her art—next, of course, to having appeared in some provincial pantomime at the age of three—was the deftness with which she contrived, in parts demanding a rapid succession of emotions, to dab her cheeks quite quickly with rouge from the palm of her right hand or powder from the palm of her left. Gracious goodness! why do not we have masks upon the stage? Drama is the presentment of the soul in action. The mirror of ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... a-goin' to fire into him, so I gave the frigate a dig wi' my heels—tho' I'd got no irons on 'em—an' tried to shove up alongside of a fat young cow as was skylarkin' on ahead. As we went past the bull he made a vicious dab wi' his horn, and caught the frigate on her flank—right abaft the mizzen chains, like. Whew! you should ha' seen what a sheer she made right away to starboard! If it hadn't bin that I was on the look-out, I'd ha' bin slap overboard that ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... telling the truth about himself as he can. And he will tell the truth in spite of himself, for his facts and his fictions will work loyally together for the protection of the reader; each fact and each fiction will be a dab of paint, each will fall in its right place, and together they will paint his portrait; not the portrait he thinks they are painting, but his real portrait, the inside of him, the soul of him, his character. Without intending ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... from which process she would emerge looking pinker and creamier than ever. Lil knew when camisoles were edged with filet, and when with Irish. Instinctively she sensed when taffeta was to be superseded by foulard. The contents of her scented bureau drawers needed only a dab of whipped cream on top to look as if they might have been ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... treat—his birthday. Because of it, they had given him actual food for the first time in years: a cake, conspicuous in its barrenness of candles; a glass of real vegetable juices; a dab of potato; an indescribable green that might have been anything at all; and a little steak. A succulent, savory-looking ...
— Life Sentence • James McConnell
... that she was most hideously pock-marked. Furthermore, the disease cost her an eye, leaving a cavity, a gaping and unsightly wound, comparable to the dumplings called kuzumanju, white puffy masses of rice dough with a depression in the centre marked by a dab of the dark-brown bean paste. The neighbours used to say that O'Mino was nin san bake shichi—that is, three parts human and seven parts apparition. The more critical reduced her humanity to the factor one. The children had no name for her but "Oni" (fiend). ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... Giles described the habits of the birds which frequented this reedy spot. Jamie listened open-eyed to his accounts of the moor-hen, flapper, coot, water-rail, dab-chick, and sand-piper, to say nothing of rats in abundance, and an otter now and then. If you crept upon the islet very quietly, you could hear the rats before you saw them. Carefully listening to the sounds, you frequently discovered the rat ...
— A Vanished Hand • Sarah Doudney
... Tufts of straw, sands, fragments, Buoyed hither from many moods, one contradicting another, From the storm, the long calm, the darkness, the swell, Musing, pondering, a breath, a briny tear, a dab of liquid or soil, Up just as much out of fathomless workings fermented and thrown, A limp blossom or two, torn, just as much over waves floating, drifted at random, Just as much for us that sobbing dirge ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... (Frederick Confessed it with amazement) those of the Marquis de la Fare. Voltaire, there could be no doubt, would do just what was needed; he would know how to squeeze in a little further the waist of the German Calliope, to apply with his deft fingers precisely the right dab of rouge to her cheeks, to instil into her movements the last nuances of correct deportment. And, if he did that, of what consequence were the blemishes of his personal character? 'On peut apprendre de ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... ones? But we are good packers. We put a lot in 'em) I could be terribly funny, if only women were going to read this. They'd understand. They know all about men. They'd go up-stairs and put on a negligee and get six baby pillows and dab a little cold cream around their eyes and then lie down on the couch and read, and they would all think I must have known their ...
— 'Oh, Well, You Know How Women Are!' AND 'Isn't That Just Like a Man!' • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... observed that every week some horse more determined than the average has been too much for the wind, or the patience, of most of the subscribers. One only has never been beaten, the Marquess of S——, but then he was always in condition; a dab hand at every athletic sport, extremely active, and gifted with a "calmness," as well as a nerve, which few men of ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... were working in the kitchen fixing the new range in place of the old one which they had taken out. They had been engaged on this job all day, and their hands and faces and clothes were covered with soot, which they had also contrived to smear and dab all over the surfaces of the doors and other woodwork in the room, much to the indignation of Crass and Slyme, who had to wash it all off before they could put on the ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... turbot, carp, cockles, cod, crabs, dab, dory, eels, gudgeon, gurnets, haddocks, bake, halibut, herrings, ling, lobsters, mackerel, mussels, oysters, perch, pike, plaice, ruffe, salmon, shrimps, skate, smelts, soles, ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... down the stairs Miss Carter dropped behind the others. So did Bob Strahan. As he waited for her he saw her dab her eyes with her handkerchief and he put out his hand and touched ...
— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett
... awhile on the lattice of the mouth, inspects it attentively; but, whether because circumstances failed to serve me, or because the wire network inspired her with distrust, I never saw her dab her eggs upon it for certain. As her evidence was doubtful, I had recourse ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... were at it with might and main (payment by results being the rule in this department of industry), and attendant boys strolled up and down, picking the fleeces from the floor and carrying them to the sorter's table. One was the tar-boy, whose business it was to dab a brushful of tar upon any scarlet patch appearing upon a white under-coat where the shears had clipped too close. The sorter or classer stood behind his long table, above and at right angles to the lines of sheep-pens and shearers. Near him on either hand ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... of the better articles in the Department, the Army Commissary at Hilton Head declaring that we used up more candles and sugar than any regiment; so we have got to draw soldier's rations again, a few candles, a little dab of sugar, a big hunk of salt food, and hard biscuit. They can be swapped for duck and chickens, but what a bother ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... and just you tell us right out what it is without any more fooling," and Rex made a playful dab at his ...
— Two Boys and a Fortune • Matthew White, Jr.
... typewriter, where with heaving shoulders she strove to mute her mirth with a ridiculous dab of pink cambric. ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins
... has been taken off its foundation, lay it, face downwards, on a piece of fine white flannel; then dip a piece of very stiff new organdie muslin into water, take it out again almost immediately and wring it slightly, so that no drops may fall from it, and then dab the wrong side of the lace all over with this pad of damp muslin and iron it with a hot iron which should be moved slowly forwards so that the moisture which the organdie has imparted to the lace may evaporate slowly. Not until you are quite ...
— Encyclopedia of Needlework • Therese de Dillmont
... you say he is all right," answered the man, smiling as he put the least tiny dab more of varnish on the Donkey's back. "Shall I set him on the shelf to dry, so you may soon take him down to Earth for some ...
— The Story of a Nodding Donkey • Laura Lee Hope
... not to grow industriously, after the way Dab and I have sprained our old backs spading and feeding them according to spiritual direction that stood over us with a rake," answered father, with proud if profane enthusiasm. There was a faint pink glow in his haggard, thin cheeks, ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... fond of Barty that they forgave him his insular affectation; some even helped him to dab his sore eye; among them Jolivet trois himself, who was a very good-natured chap, and very good-looking into the bargain; and he had received from Barty a sore eye too—gallice, "un pochon"—scholastice, "un oeil au ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... his coat with great celerity and adroitness. Sometimes they clipped off a sample of the sheep, but that is customary with shearers, and they don't mind it; they don't even mind it as much as the sheep. They dab a splotch of sheep-dip on the place and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... room, a toy or some small article of furniture would be hung on the wall and the children would have to fetch it without touching the wall. When the child who fetches it comes back, if he has failed ever so little to fulfil the conditions, a dab of white on the brim of his cap, the tip of his shoe, the flap of his coat or his sleeve, will betray his ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... girls will all, eventually, put on; fill up"—Sylvia added a dab of clay to a doubtful curve—"but men, when they chip off from the approved design, look like nothing ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... and kind-hearted fellow, beyond a doubt, and a valuable friend for a growing boy like Dab Kinzer. It is not everybody's brother-in-law who would find time, during his wedding trip, to hunt up even so very pretty a New England village as Grantley, and inquire into questions of board and ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... learned it, When he had gathered all books had to give! Sooner, he spurned it. Image the whole, then execute the parts— Fancy the fabric {70} Quite, ere you build, ere steel strike fire from quartz, Ere mortar dab brick! ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... within the hour. He found Joyce at home in the kitchen. She was making pies energetically. The sleeves of her dress were rolled up to the elbows and there was a dab of flour on her temple where she had brushed back a rebellious ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... or chowder, with crackers on the side, a generous helping of well-cooked meat, with bread or potatoes, and the simplest relishes, or a royally fat pudding overrun with brandy sauce; each or either can put it all over a splash of this, a dab of that, a slab of something else, set lonesomely on a separate plate and reckoned a meal—in courses. Courses are all well enough—they have my warm heart when they come "in the picture." But when they are mostly ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams
... tolerably open sunlit part, full of growth of the most dazzling green. Now he neared the insect; now it dashed off again, and led him a tremendous chase, till, just as the doctor shouted to him to return, we saw him make a dab down with his ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... through and into everything. When a man descends at Voi for dinner he finds his fellow-travellers have changed complexion. The pale clerk from indoor Mombasa has put on a fine healthy sunburn; and the company in general present a rich out-of-doors bloom. A chance dab with a white napkin comes away ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... thing, for by organization alone could you feel sure that you were getting a return for your money. Organization—and again, organization! And there is no doubt that she was what old Jolyon called her—"a 'dab' at that"—he went further, he called ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... or Cage), wife of John Parker (d. 1602). The font is fourteenth century. Radwell, formerly Reedwell, is said to owe its name to the many reeds that grew by the river-side. There are plenty of moor hens, coots and dab-chicks on the lake-like expansion of the Ivel near ...
— Hertfordshire • Herbert W Tompkins
... them all through her handkerchief, which she was using to dab her eyes; of Longstreet she never for an instant lost sight. She saw the eagerness in his eyes and knew that it was an eagerness to believe in her. She saw Helen's anger and contempt; she saw Carr's black looks; she saw, too, how ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... root of the matter. Body alive, man! When you were talking about my pictures, I then began to understand myself for the first time, I believe; and because you do not imitate my style,—do not, like a good many others, take a tube of black paint in your hand, or dab on a few glaring colours, or even make two or three crippled figures with repulsive faces look up from the midst of filth and dirt, and then say, 'There's a Salvator for you!'—just for these very reasons ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... am free," muttered the goldsmith. "The English seals, I happen to know, usually arrive in a melted or broken condition. To restore them too perfectly would be to court detection—a dab of sealing-wax, impressed with a key and sat upon afterwards, will answer the purpose. But this robbing business—well, it suits my temperament, if it doesn't suit my conscience. Oh, I like doing it—my instincts point that way. But the Sunday-school training ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... opponents to spit on the tips of each others noses. At first, this cleanly interchange of saliva goes on slowly and deliberately—Socrates never measured the leap of a flea with more seriousness—but presently one receives a dab in the eye, another in the mouth. They begin to grow hot and angry. "I hit your nose," cries one. "No, it was my cheek!" replied the other. They draw a little nearer, in order to ascertain the truth by feeling; spit, spit, ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various
... answered. "Hilda will go straight to bed, poor girl; and Ramsey will sit beside her and dab cologne on her forehead, and after a while he'll coax her to eat a cracker and drink some tea, and he'll have his dinner right there beside her. You don't know the turtle-doves. I don't hanker for my own society to-night, but I shall have to put ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens
... around, Kenny in an interval of frantic excitement would not have been forced to fish him out of the stream by his coattails. He considered always that he saved the old man's life. Nor had he meant to dab at him with the oar, thereby encouraging the unfortunate old chap to duck and misinterpret his obvious intention ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... intelligent reveals to him"—that is one I remember. But that would have been little, putting his damnd Shoemaker phraseology (for he was a shoemaker) in stead of mine, which has been tinctured with better authors than his ignorance can comprehend—for I reckon myself a dab at Prose—verse I leave to my betters—God help them, if they are to be so reviewed by friend and foe as you have been this quarter. I have read "It won't do." But worse than altering words, he has kept a few members only of the part I had done best, which was to explain all I could ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... What! when but one dab of paint would make a man of a ghost, and it Mackintosh of a herring-net—to refuse it I am full. I ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... sup, and discuss each other's affairs! Take Mr. Bennet's reception of his sons-in-law. Take Sir Walter Elliot compassionating the navy and Admiral Baldwin—'nine grey hairs of a side, and nothing but a dab of powder at top—a wretched example of what a seafaring life can do, for men who are exposed to every climate and weather until they are not fit to be seen. It is a pity they are not knocked on the head at ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... have Vistors—really don't want visitors,' she said; 'little repose—and all that sort of thing—is what I quire. No odious brutes must proach me till I've shaken off this numbness;' and in a grisly resumption of her coquettish ways, she made a dab at the Major with her fan, but overset Mr Dombey's breakfast cup instead, which was in ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... potatoes into slices of equal thickness, say the thickness of two penny pieces; and as they are cut out of hand, let them be dropped into a pan of cold water. When about to fry the potatoes, first drain them on a clean cloth, and dab them all over, in order to absorb all moisture; while this has been going on, you will have made some kind of fat (entirely free from water or gravy, such as lard, for instance) very hot in a frying-pan, and into this drop your prepared potatoes, only ...
— A Plain Cookery Book for the Working Classes • Charles Elme Francatelli
... scowl, "I guess I'll change that order a little. Instead of that cold porridge I'll take—um, yes—a little hot partridge. And you might as well bring me an oyster or two on the half shell, and a mouthful of soup (mock-turtle, consomme, anything), and perhaps you might fetch along a dab of fish, and a little peck of Stilton, and a grape, ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... no claims at all, historical, geographical, or economic. The old arrangement a humbug; as inconvenient as a fifth wheel of a coach; costs the State thousands of greenbacks every year. Figure it all up statistically and dab it over with your shiniest rhetoric and make a big thing of it every way. That's what you've got to do; that's your little biz. I'll tend to ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... will you tell Irving for me —I can't get up courage enough to talk about this misfortune myself, except to you, whom by good luck I haven't damaged yet—that when the wreckage presently floats ashore he will get a good deal of his $500 back; and a dab at a time I will make up to ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... set up a place once for mending bicycles; and I used to stand about at the door, as if I had just returned from a ride; and when fellows came in, with a nut loose or something, I'd begin talking with them while Bertie tightened it. Then, when THEY weren't looking, I'd dab the business end of a darning-needle, so, just plump into their tires; and of course, as soon as they went off, they were back again in a minute to get a puncture mended! I call ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... party? There was no more satire in it, so far as he is concerned, than in painting lilies white. A full-length portrait of the fair Lady Beatrix, too, must needs show a gay and vivid figure, superbly glittering across the vista of those stately days. Then, should Dab and Tab, the eminent critics, step up and demand that her eyes be a pale blue, and her stomacher higher around the neck? Do Dab and Tab expect to gather pears from peach-trees? Or, because their theory of dendrology convinces them ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... he will like my answer; it is as good a one as I can write though nothing to his; Indeed I had always heard what a dab he was at a Love-letter. I saw him you know for the first time at Lady Scudamores—And when I saw her Ladyship afterwards she asked me how I liked ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... color. But from the city it was a two hours' journey by horse and phaeton. My grandfather drove. I sat next, my feet swinging clear of the lunchbox. My brother had the outside, a place denied to me for fear that I might fall across the wheel. When we were all set, my mother made a last dab at my nose—an unheeded smudge having escaped my vigilance. Then my grandfather said, "Get up,"—twice, for the lazy horse chose to regard the first summons as a jest. We start. The great wheels turn. My brother ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... on an old cushion, or something soft, cone side downwards. If you decide to have a glass over your picture, you must get a piece beforehand at a glazier's, about the same size as the picture. Rub if bright with a leather, put a small dab of glue in each corner, and place it in ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... on the subject of fritters. When will English housekeepers grasp the idea of frying? They cannot get beyond a dab of grease or butter in a frying-pan. The bath of boiling oil seems to be beyond them, or at any rate a degree of civilisation that has not yet passed beyond the limit of the fried-fish shop. The oil will do over and over again, and in the end is undoubtedly cheaper than ...
— Cassell's Vegetarian Cookery - A Manual Of Cheap And Wholesome Diet • A. G. Payne
... breakfast the cat rubbed up against him more vigorously than usual; but Tom, being bewildered between his expected gain in corn and the positive loss of his child's toe, kept never minding her, until the cat, with a sort of caterwauling growl, gave Tom a dab of her claws, that went clean through his leathers, and a little further. 'Wow!' says Tom, with a jump, clapping his hand on the part, and rubbing it, 'by this and that, you drew the blood out o' me,' ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... hearthstone back of the shoe-shop, rented a vacant store room on Market Street and went into the millinery way of life. And it wasn't enough that the tired genii had to gouge out the streets of Harvey; to fill in the gulleys and ravines; to dab in scores of new houses; to toil and moil over the new hotel, witching up four bleak stories upon the prairie. It wasn't enough that they had to cast a spell on people all over the earth, dragging strangers to Harvey ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... old and quaint and rambling, part of the old wattle and dab walls yet remaining in some of the outhouses, as well as the grey shingle roof. There was a more modern part, for the house had been added to from time to time by different owners, though no additions ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... planted himself on a low chair by the kitchen fire, with a lapstone, a hammer, a piece of sole leather, and some waxed-ends, in order to cobble an old pair of cowhide boots; he being, in his own phrase, "something of a dab" (whatever degree of skill that may imply) at the shoemaking business. We heard the tap of his hammer at intervals for the rest of the evening. The remainder of the party adjourned to the sitting-room. Good Mrs. Foster took her knitting-work, and soon fell fast ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... my dear, so that we shall positively be furthering their wishes. Come, Jane; ain't I only wise in bringing my indiscretions to you to set right, since you are such a dab at getting me out of ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... Katherine, I can see, when the two eldest, who come in while we are at breakfast each day, take the jam-spoon, or something equally horrid, and dab it all over the cloth. Yesterday they put their hands in the honey-dish which Mr. Montgomerie was helping himself to, and then after smearing him (the "burrrs" were awful), they went round the table to escape being caught, and fingered ...
— Red Hair • Elinor Glyn
... head of Porter's. His instructor would stand over him and tell him in a dozen words just exactly what entries to make in a customer's passbook. Porter would stare into oblivion during the lesson and when it was done make a dab at his ink-pot, enter up a cheque as credit, cross it out and make it a debit, then reverse the entry—all before Watson could interfere. The Bonehead was not slow; in fact, he was too rapid—but ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... while others may need several months. Look at the leaves every day, and when one seems to be ready slip a piece of cardboard under it and shake it about gently in fresh cold water. If any green stuff remains, dab it with a soft brush and then put it into another basin of clean water. A fine needle can be used to take away any small and obstinate pieces of green. It is now a skeleton and must be bleached according to the following directions:—Pour into a large earthenware jar a pint of water on half a pound ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... family back with it. This little friend lived for three years with the prior, and to his great grief came no more in the fourth. The learned have exhausted their arts to discover what a burnet can be, and have given up the chase. Some would have him to be a barnacle goose, others a dab-chick or coot—none of which can fairly be classed as aviculae small birds. Burnet is brown or red brown, and rather bright at that. We have it in Chaucer's "Romaunt ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson
... perspiration was streaming, and an unlucky blow on the nose set another stream flowing, while, all at once, a dab in the eye made the optic flinch, close its lid from intense pain, and refuse to open again, so that one-eyed like a regular old Cyclops, and panting like the same gentleman from the exertions of using ...
— Marcus: the Young Centurion • George Manville Fenn
... Germaine is a pretty collection of moods) gleam with the impulsive devilry of a gamine; Germaine, who teases an old vagabond painter like myself, by daubing a purple moon in the middle of my morning sketch, adds a dab on my nose when I protest, and the next instant embraces me, and ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... seen us the following morning. The snow had drifted in so that in places it was over six feet high. I ventured out and found that every exit but one from the Home was snowed up. We had therefore to dig ourselves out of the woodshed door and into the others from the outside. You make a dab with a shovel in the direction where you think you last saw the desired door before the storm, and trust the fates for results. Part of our roof has blown off and our chimney is in a ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... entirely to the menial occupation of announcing, by a single dab, or a variation of raps, the desire of persons on the door-step to communicate with the occupants of the interior of a mansion. Modern genius has elevated it into a source of refined pleasure and practical ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... child touches something forbidden. She didn't say a word, just watched me mischievously while she arranged the tea cups on the other end of the table. Presently she lighted a tiny temple lamp, melted a dab of sealing wax in its wavering blue flames—rose-colored wax it was—and it splashed out on the gray ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... presses by the windows stood the hand ironers who did the fancy work. First came Ella, neat, old, gray-haired, fearfully thin, wrinkled, with a dab of red rouge on each cheek. After all, one really cannot be old if one dabs on rouge before coming to work all day in a laundry. Ella had hand ironed all her life. She had been ten years in her last job, but the place changed hands. She ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... the saying goes, or it may be that the whole cerebral structure is involved—and then when he is apparently all through the Demoniac Dabber comes back and dabs me one more fiendish, deliberate and premeditated dab, making nine hundred and seventy-five dabs in all. He has to do it; it's in the ritual that I and you and everybody must have that last dab. I wonder how many gibbering idiots there are in the asylum ...
— Cobb's Anatomy • Irvin S. Cobb
... saloon pistol, and will be exhibited in the museums of the next century as being the weapon with which the new era was inaugurated. Into the breech I place a Boxer cartridge, specialty provided for experimental purposes with a steel bullet. I aim point blank at the dab of red sealing wax upon the wall, which is four inches above the magnet. I am an absolutely dead shot. I fire. You will now advance, and satisfy yourself that the bullet is flattened upon the ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... mark visible on the glass, it will only make a grease mark, and that hardly visible, not enough to cut by; but take a soft dabber—a lump of cotton-wool tied up in a bit of old handkerchief—and with this, dipped in dry whitening or powdered white chalk, dab the glass all over; then blow the surface and you will see a clear white line where the whitening has stuck to the greasy line made by the transfer paper; and by this ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... was waiting for him, he saw that she had her arms around the neck of her horse, and that she was crying dismally, heart-brokenly, with an abandon that took no thought of his presence. Keith had never seen a girl cry like that before. He had seen them dab at their eyes with their handkerchief, and smile the next breath—but this was different. For a minute he didn't quite know what to do; he could hear the blood hammering against his temples while he stood dumbly watching her. He ...
— Her Prairie Knight • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B. M. Bower
... with a formal little cough a second attempt to drive away this very assured native. "As I was saying, Miss Dwight, I wouldn't mind going into Parliament, you know, if it weren't for the bally labor members. I'm rather strong on speaking—that sort of thing, you know. Used to be a dab at it. But I couldn't stand the bounders that get in nowadays. ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... are generally allowanced: a pint of corn meal and a salt herring is the allowance, or in lieu of the herring a "dab" of fat meat of about the same value. I have known the sour milk, and clauber to be served out to the hands, when there was an abundance of milk on the plantation. This is a luxury ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... frightened. No old dog will touch this animal, for he knows better than to get a mouthful of sharp toothpicks by biting Mr. Porcupine, who is like a round pincushion with the pins pointing out. A dog who has never seen this prickly ball will dab at it, and have a sore paw ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton
... of jotting down notes; Landy Spencer sat quietly, his face immobile; Adine Lough went to the window ostensibly to dab on make-up, but really to suppress smiles and stifle laughter. A man of importance—a bank receiver, an arm of the court—was being kidded ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney
... me I'm mighty near froze. Taos nights in November has a heap of things in common with them Artic regions we hears of, where them fur-lined sports goes in pursoot of that North Pole. Bein' froze, an' mebby from an over-dab of nose-paint, I never saveys about this yere Spanish Bill meetin' up with me that a-way ontil later. But by what the barkeep says, he drug me into the Tub of Blood an' allows he's got ...
— Wolfville • Alfred Henry Lewis
... dabs of vermilion. There is something simple in the practice. Contort the eyebrow sufficiently, and place the eyeball near it,—by a few lines you have anger or fierceness depicted. Give me a mouth with no special expression, and pop a dab of carmine at each extremity—and there are the lips smiling. This is art if you will, but a very naive kind of art: and now you know the trick, don't you see how easy ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... dripping hedges; swarming over tarry fence and slimy paling. On, on it pants—through Bishop's Wood, by tangled Churchyard Bottom, where now the railway shrieks; down sloppy lanes, bordering Muswell Hill, where now stand rows of jerry-built, prim villas. At intervals it stops an instant to dab its eyes with its dingy little rag of a handkerchief, to rearrange the bundle under its arm, its chief anxiety to keep well out of sight of chance wanderers, to dodge farmhouses, to dart across highroads when nobody ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... deficiency of the better articles in the Department, the Army Commissary at Hilton Head declaring that we used up more candles and sugar than any regiment; so we have got to draw soldier's rations again, a few candles, a little dab of sugar, a big hunk of salt food, and hard biscuit. They can be swapped for duck and chickens, but what ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... fainted," Dixie said, calmly, "but we won't argue about it. I'll tell you one thing, though, Sam Pitman, if this thing goes on—I say, if Joe is overworked like this any more—a single other time—and it comes to my knowledge, I'll take you smack-dab to court. I don't meddle in things that don't concern me, as a general thing, but I'll take this in hand and I'll clutch ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... in which there can be felt the mixture of the two preceding elements, the direct creation and the metaphor: le cab jaspine, je marronne que la roulotte de Pantin trime dans le sabri, the dog is barking, I suspect that the diligence for Paris is passing through the woods. Le dab est sinve, la dabuge est merloussiere, la fee est bative, the bourgeois is stupid, the bourgeoise is cunning, the daughter is pretty. Generally, to throw listeners off the track, slang confines itself to adding to all the words of the language without distinction, an ignoble ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... Quartet is marked by all the brightness and incident which made 'Dab Kinzer' such a favorite with the ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston
... teeter around, Kenny in an interval of frantic excitement would not have been forced to fish him out of the stream by his coattails. He considered always that he saved the old man's life. Nor had he meant to dab at him with the oar, thereby encouraging the unfortunate old chap to duck and misinterpret his obvious intention ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... to conquer. When she had left Chicago, her grammar had been unexceptionable; but since she had been in England, she said "you ain't" and dropped all her g's; and when Montague brought down a bird at long range, she exclaimed, condescendingly, "Why, you're quite a dab at it!" He sat in the front seat of an automobile, and heard the great lady behind him referring to the sturdy Jersey farmers, whose ancestors had fought the British and Hessians all over the state, ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... began to dab at her eyes with a damp, small wad of blue-bordered handkerchief. "I just couldn't tell him in the daytime. I nearly did, last night. I meant to, 'cross-my-heart,' I did! We went for a walk, and I was just—just sort of beginning when a woman came ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... off a small piece of clean washleather, which has an even, smooth surface. Let the color become nearly dry, then proceed to dab it all over with the washleather, held on the end of the finger, breathing on the slide when necessary, in order to keep it ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892 • Various
... as the scientist dipped his lead pencil into his open mouth so that he would be able to dab down first impressions the moment he turned his thick ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... inhaling the breath of freedom, when all on a sudden voices invisible in the mist, came round a corner. It was one of Ar-hap's war-canoes toiling up-stream. Heru and I ducked down into the haze like dab-chicks and ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... makes them tokens. As a roole he's defiant of sperits; an' even when he ain't he don't see no refooge in a cross. Mexicans, on the other hand, is plenty strong on said symbol. Every mornin' you beholds a Mexican with a dab of white on his fore'erd an' on each cheek bone, an' also on his chin where he crosses himse'f with flour; shore, the custom is yooniversal an' it takes a quart of flour to fully fortify a full-blown Greaser household ag'inst the ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... with crackers on the side, a generous helping of well-cooked meat, with bread or potatoes, and the simplest relishes, or a royally fat pudding overrun with brandy sauce; each or either can put it all over a splash of this, a dab of that, a slab of something else, set lonesomely on a separate plate and reckoned a meal—in courses. Courses are all well enough—they have my warm heart when they come "in the picture." But when they are mostly "The substance of things hoped ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams
... your beating about the bush. A man would blurt it out, and then I would know where I am at. Hang it if I know now. You all say that your sister is singular and that she distresses your father, and you"—addressing Imogen—"say that she must be in that house. You are the only one who does make a dab at speaking out; I will say that much for you. Now, if she is in that house, what in thunder is ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... forth, each giving a vengeful dab at the nest in passing. They did not fall-to and deliberately destroy it, for they might have been caught at their mischief. As it was, whenever the yellow-birds came back, their enemies were hidden in their own sight-proof bush. Several times their unconscious ...
— My Garden Acquaintance • James Russell Lowell
... when he is angry or frightened. No old dog will touch this animal, for he knows better than to get a mouthful of sharp toothpicks by biting Mr. Porcupine, who is like a round pincushion with the pins pointing out. A dog who has never seen this prickly ball will dab at it, and have a sore paw to nurse ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton
... Macmorrough?' said I. 'We of the fancy, sir,' says he, 'see these things, without referrin' to no books, by the light of Nature.' And next day we had a set-to with the gloves, and his verdict was 'Only just short of professional.' Those boys were delighted. I wonder how and when I became such a dab at it?" ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... is pleasant! To be quite alone here (dab), surrounded by these magnificent works (dab, dab, dab), and everything so quiet too—nothing to disturb one." (Dab) after a pause. "I wonder what Jones and Robinson are doing (dab, splash)—lying at full length in a gondola, I dare say—smoking (dab), I think I could spend my life in ...
— The Foreign Tour of Messrs. Brown, Jones and Robinson • Richard Doyle
... agitated. A sickening suspicion came over us. The next moment one of those belligerent young roosters thrust a head out of either of those coat-tail pockets. One uttered a raucous crow, the other made a vicious dab. Uncle Bentley dropped the plate with a scattering of coin, seized a coat skirt in each hand, and drew it front. This dumped both fowls out on the floor, where they went at it hammer and tongs. What happened after this is a blur in most of our memories. ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... earth a little higher graded: Perhaps upon a stone a chiselled name: A dab of printer's ink soon blurred and faded— And ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... the Roman deity. "The figure," he tells us, "is squat, crouched, as it were, before its own attributes, with arms longer than a gorilla's. The head is of mud or wood rising conically to an almost pointed poll; a dab of clay represents the nose; the mouth is a gash from ear to ear. This deity almost fills a temple of dwarf thatch, open at the sides. ...Legba is of either sex, but rarely feminine.... In this point Legba differs from the classical Pan and ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... get the map. The moment his back was turned, Kennedy reached over to a typewriter desk that stood in a corner of the office, left open by the stenographer, who had gone. He took two thin second sheets of paper and a new carbon sheet. A hasty dab or two of the ...
— The Gold of the Gods • Arthur B. Reeve
... own feather bed. Now I've got a suggestion about that; first principles bring us to the skin; fortify that, and the matter's done. How would it do to bile a big kittle full of tar, tallow, beeswax and injen rubber, with considerable wool, and dab the whole family once a week? The young'uns might be soused in it every Saturday night, and the nigger might fix the elderly folks with a whitewash brush. Then there wouldn't be no bother a washing your clothes or yourself, which last is ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... [dab] Pedazo pequeo de alguna cosa; salpicadura; golpe blando. Munting putol; pilansik; hampas ...
— Dictionary English-Spanish-Tagalog • Sofronio G. Calderon
... slippered feet going to and fro in Hapley's room. A chair was overturned, and there was a violent dab at the wall. Then a china mantel ornament smashed upon the fender. Suddenly the door of the room opened, and they heard him upon the landing. They clung to one another, listening. He seemed to be dancing upon the staircase. Now he would go down three or four steps quickly, then up ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... different place," answered Iromea, who ran from English to French to Tahitian, but of course not with the ease of Lovaina, for that great heart knew many of the cities of her father's land, was educated in needlework style, and with a little dab of Yankee culture, now fast disappearing as she grew older. One marked that tendency to reversion to the native type and ways among many islanders who had been superficially coated with civilization, but whom environment and heredity ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... into place and done his quarrel with an importunate stranger who elbowed, before Caterham came. He walked out of a shadow towards the middle of the platform, the most insignificant little pigmy, away there in the distance, a little black figure with a pink dab for a face,—in profile one saw his quite distinctive aquiline nose—a little figure that trailed after it most inexplicably—a cheer. A cheer it was that began away there and grew and spread. A little spluttering of voices about the platform at first that suddenly ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... Glass.—Two ounces of spirits of salts, two ounces of oil of vitriol, one ounce of sulphate of copper, one ounce of gum arabic, mixed together and dabbed on with a brush; or this:—Dab your squares regularly over with putty; when dry go over them again—the imitation will be executed. Or this:—Mix Epsom salts with porter and apply it with a brush. Or this one:—Grind and mix white lead in three-fourths of boiled oil, and one-fourth of spirits of turpentine, and, ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... chap, I was talking at random. Very well. I'll do penance in sackcloth and ashes by remaining here, and applauding your poetic efforts. I'll even help. I'm a dab at sonnets." ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... the battery and being provided with all needful materials, the gunner and his assistants take their places, and the drummer is to beat a roll. The gunner cleans the piece carefully with a dry rammer, and in pulling out the said rammer gives a dab or two to the mouth of the piece to remove any dirt adhering." (At this point it was customary to make the sign of the cross and invoke the intercession ...
— Artillery Through the Ages - A Short Illustrated History of Cannon, Emphasizing Types Used in America • Albert Manucy
... to the splendors of the enlarged bank room, Amzi had not abandoned his old straw hat and seersucker coat, albeit the hat had been decorated with a dab of paint by some impious workman, and the coat would not have been seriously injured by a visit ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... to live, When he had learned it, When he had gathered all books had to give! Sooner, he spurned it. Image the whole, then execute the parts— Fancy the fabric {70} Quite, ere you build, ere steel strike fire from quartz, Ere mortar dab brick! ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... upright, and went with heaving bosom to the window, then drew back in surprise, for she saw the face of Mrs. Rocliffe at the pane, her nose applied to and flattened against the glass, and looking like a dab of putty. ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... see after her flock; and while she was away the Fox crept into the churn and ate up the cream. So when the Goody came back and saw that, she fell into such a rage, that she snatched up the little morsel of the cream that was left, and threw it at the fox as he ran off, so that he got a dab of it on the end of his tail, and that's the reason why the fox has a white tip ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... when (Robert having placed his tea-things on the table) she showed him how to make the tea; an apparently simple feat that the freshman found himself perfectly unable to accomplish. And then Mrs. Tester made a final dab, and her exit, and our hero sat over his tea as long as he could, because it gave an idea of cheerfulness; and then, after directing Robert to be sure not to forget to call him in time for morning chapel, he ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... road too rough for a carriage, we passed through fields and hedgerows to an erection which looks too insignificant for such solemn use. Don't expect any ghastly details. A longish building of "wattle and dab," much like the northern farmhouses, a high roof, and chimneys resembling those of the "oast houses" in Kent, combine with the rural surroundings to suggest "farm buildings" rather than the "funeral pyre," and all that is horrible is left ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... provisional aim at the gap in the grating. I could hear now quite distinctly the soft twittering of the ascending Selenites, the dab of their hands against the rock, and the falling of dust from ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... turned toward the doorway, the person in question appeared in it, and raised her veil. I was perfectly paralyzed. It was Bella! Bella in a fur coat and a veil, with the most tragic eyes I ever saw and entirely white except for a dab of rouge in the middle of each cheek. We stared at each other without speech. The maid turned and went down the hall, and with that Bella came over to me and clutched ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... surpassed (Frederick Confessed it with amazement) those of the Marquis de la Fare. Voltaire, there could be no doubt, would do just what was needed; he would know how to squeeze in a little further the waist of the German Calliope, to apply with his deft fingers precisely the right dab of rouge to her cheeks, to instil into her movements the last nuances of correct deportment. And, if he did that, of what consequence were the blemishes of his personal character? 'On peut apprendre ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... various, but for the most part she could not understand what was said. "Who'll mind the baby nar?" was one of the night's inspirations, and very frequent. A lean young man in spectacles pursued her for some time, crying "Courage! Courage!" Somebody threw a dab of mud at her, and some of it got down her neck. Immeasurable disgust possessed her. She felt draggled and ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... ducks, for the sake of seeing them waddle; and then, when they got to the pond, he sent his dog in after them to bark and frighten them out of their wits. And as I came by, nothing would serve him but throwing a great dab of mud all over the sleeve of my coat. So I said, "Why, Master Sam, you need not have done that; I did nothing to offend you; and however amusing you may think it to insult poor people, I assure you it is very wicked, and what no good person in the world would ...
— The Life and Perambulations of a Mouse • Dorothy Kilner
... approximately the color. Don't stir them up; drag one into the other a little—very little. The color is crude? Another color or two will bring it into tone. Don't mix it much. Don't smear it all over your palette. Make a smallish dab of it, keeping it well piled up. If you get any one color too great in quantity, then you will have to take more of the others again to keep it in balance. Be careful to take as nearly the right proportions of each at the first picking up, ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst
... grasped, but the effect of which every one welcomed with the profoundest relief. He was the regimental medical officer, a tall, slight man, with a keen eye, a pleasant face crowned by a topknot of flaming hair, and with a little dab of hair of like colour upon his upper lip, which he fondly cherished, as an important ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... of the old one which they had taken out. They had been engaged on this job all day, and their hands and faces and clothes were covered with soot, which they had also contrived to smear and dab all over the surfaces of the doors and other woodwork in the room, much to the indignation of Crass and Slyme, who had to wash it all off before they could put on the final coat ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... no "thin red" 'eroes, no, not yet, But a patient, docile, plucky, "thin brown line." May be useful in its way, my boy, you bet'! All good fighters may shake fists, you know—'ere's mine! You're a daisy, you're a dasher, you're a dab! I'll fight with you, or join you on a spree Let the skulkers and the scuttlers stow their gab, TOMMY ATKINS drinks your 'ealth with three times three! So 'ere's to you, my fine Fellah! 'E who funked the 'ot Soudan, And the furious Fuzzy-Wuzzies, grows a first-class fighting-man: An' 'ere's to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 14, 1893 • Various
... car, joyously raffish as a pair of gipsies. She wiped a dab of mud from her cheek, and remarked with an earnestness and a naturalness which that Jeff Saxton who knew her so well would never ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... for their breakfast, for there was famine in the settlement, and the few pioneers left in it were kept alive on a diet of roast flathead. On the beach three boats were drawn up out of reach of the tide, and looking behind him Jack counted twelve huts and one store of wattle-and-dab. The store had been built to hold the goods of the Port Albert Company. It was in charge of John Campbell, and contained a quantity of axes, tomahawks, saddles and bridles, a grindstone, some shot and powder, two double-barrelled guns, nails and hammers, and a few ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... thistle, and the sweet briar pleasantly affected my European eyes. The villages are no longer moveable: the Kraal and wigwam are replaced by the Gambisa or bell- shaped hut of Middle Africa [9], circular cottages of holcus wattle, Covered with coarse dab and surmounted by a stiff, conical, thatch roof, above which appears the central supporting post, crowned with a gourd or ostrich egg. [10] Strong abbatis of thorns protects these settlements, which stud the hills in all directions: near ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... moderation. small quantity, modicum, trace, hint, minimum; vanishing point; material point, atom, particle, molecule, corpuscle, point, speck, dot, mote, jot, iota, ace; minutiae, details; look, thought, idea, soupcon, dab, dight[obs3], whit, tittle, shade, shadow; spark, scintilla, gleam; touch, cast; grain, scruple, granule, globule, minim, sup, sip, sop, spice, drop, droplet, sprinkling, dash, morceau[obs3], screed, smack, tinge, tincture; inch, patch, scantling, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... range Has Olympus for one pole, for t' other the Exchange; Life, nature, lore, God, and affairs of that sort, He looks at as merely ideas; in short, As if they were fossils stuck round in a cabinet, Of such vast extent that our earth's a mere dab in it; Composed just as he is inclined to conjecture her, Namely, one part pure earth, ninety-nine parts pure lecturer; You are filled with delight at his clear demonstration, Each figure, word, gesture, ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... and slimy paling. On, on it pants—through Bishop's Wood, by tangled Churchyard Bottom, where now the railway shrieks; down sloppy lanes, bordering Muswell Hill, where now stand rows of jerry-built, prim villas. At intervals it stops an instant to dab its eyes with its dingy little rag of a handkerchief, to rearrange the bundle under its arm, its chief anxiety to keep well out of sight of chance wanderers, to dodge farmhouses, to dart across highroads when nobody is looking. And so tear-smeared and mud-bespattered up the long rise ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... other occasions, the artist had paid more attention to verisimilitude and less to mere vague harmonies and so forth, but as he was assured by that intelligent young Hillary that this method was all the Go at present, and that his friend Lucas was recognized as a rising Dab at it. That at least is how he retailed the ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... the house, Miss Fontover, was an elderly lady in spectacles, dressed almost like an abbess; a dab at Ritual, as become one of her business, and a worshipper at the ceremonial church of St. Silas, in the suburb of Beersheba before-mentioned, which Jude also had begun to attend. She was the daughter of a clergyman in reduced circumstances, and at his death, which had occurred several years before ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... steaming, Bartholomew?" I sang out; he was right in the middle of her. Looking up, he fingered his waste modestly and blushed through a dab of crude-petroleum over his eye. "Hundred and thirty pounds, sir. She's a terrible free steamer, the old 44. I'm all ready to ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... with working mouths, or as smooth and vacuous as chestnuts, little sailors and apparitions in white, obviously enjoying their employment. During this not a word was exchanged; except for the shuffling feet, the piano, an occasional phrase of encouragement from the instructor, himself gliding with a dab of fat in exaggerated ribbons, there wasn't a sound. To Lee it had the appearance of the negation of pleasure; it was, in its way, as bad as the determined dancing of adults; it had the look of a travesty ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... will!' was the lively answer; 'I'm an awful dab at brushing. Look how I brush your ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... sprang forward bawling. The youth saw his features wrathfully red, and saw him make a dab with his sword. His one thought of the incident was that the lieutenant was a peculiar creature to feel interested in such matters ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... 'I'll nothing do wi' 'ee, Go to Fanny Trembaa, she do knaw how I'm shy; Tom, this here t'other daa, down the hill thee didst stap, And dab'd a great doat fig {48} ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... reproachful-looking than sympathetic, as though I hadn't ordered that dressing-case specially on his behalf. He said he thought one of the housemaids would have some sticking-plaster. He was very sorry he was needed downstairs, but he would tell one of the housemaids. I continued to dab and to curse. The blood flowed less. I showed great spirit. I vowed Braxton should not prevent me from ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... It wanted repainting, and I think it very likely that it was a strain of that boyishness which I hope survives in us all, and one of whose quaint fancies is an envy of house-painters, so happy all day with paint-pot and brush and great smooth boards to dab and smooth, that decided him to do the job himself. Mr. Moggridge had this great element of refinement, that he thought nothing honest ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne
... and he withdrew the silk necktie, dripping, from the bottom of the jar. "That's sucked up the very last drop, sir. Hold still, sir, and let me lay this just on the top, and as soon as you begins to feel it too warm I will take it away and hang it up to dry. I won't dab the place with the handkerchy, because it will feel cooler if you let it dry ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... "dab on" the scarlet and the carmine direct from the gorgeous sun himself? Age marvels at the happiness of youth. The sombre lessons of the world have left their marks on the mind of the one; the other has everything to learn. It would seem as though its residence had been (as the poet has written so ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... whiteness," etc., all "safe to de promis' lan'," the comforting assurance over and over repeated that "by an' by we'll go an' see dem, safe in de promis' lan'." Long as it was, the song was much too short for Big Black Burl, as indeed was every song that he sung. But being a "dab" at improvising words, as well as music, he could easily spin out his melodies to any length he pleased. So, on getting to the end of his hymn, ignoring the fact, he went right on ad libitum until ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... a nice little room only three flights up in quite a decent street. And she put me in the window, of course. And then she went to work and cooked dinner for herself. And what do you suppose she had? Bread and tea and a little dab of jam! Nothing else. Not a single lobster, nor so much as one bottle of champagne. The Carruthers comedy team had both every evening, except now and then when they took a notion for pig's ...
— Waifs and Strays - Part 1 • O. Henry
... Ujina Bay and climbs over the mountains. In the afternoon the boy is so in evidence, we almost fall over him if we step. Yesterday in desperation I tied an apron on him and let him help me make a cake. Even at that, with a dab of chocolate on his cheek and flour on his nose, his summer sky eyes were weepy whenever he spoke of his "Mutter." I have done everything for him except lend him my shoulder to weep on. It may come to that. There is hope, ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... shoots of the indigenous Acacias a ready substitute for the purpose, and they used them for constructing the partitions and outer-walls of the early houses, by forming a "wattling" and daubing it with plaster or clay. (See Wattle-and-dab.) The trees thus received the name of Wattle-trees, quickly contracted to Wattle. Owing to its beautiful, golden, sweet-scented clusters of flowers, the Wattle is the favourite tree of the Australian poets ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... moment, giving a dab with his pocket-handkerchief. "Very true—you're quite right. It's far beyond any identity in the pictures. But why did you tell me," he added more sharply, "that she ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... muster," drawled he; "do na go to ruffling it here. This shop be mine, and I be free-born Englishman. I'll stand aside for no swash-buckling rogue on my own ground. Come, now, what wilt thou o' the lad?—and speak thee fair, good muster, or thou'lt get a dab o' the red-hot shoe." As he spoke he gave the black ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... Fred, laughing a little. "Don't you palm off any luncheon on us! That sounds like a dab of salad and a dab of sauce and two peas in a platter and a prayer for dinner to hurry up and come around! Cook us some grub, old girl—lots of it. Coffee and bacon and flour gravy and spuds. We'd rather wait a few minutes longer and get a square meal, wouldn't we, boys? Make ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... not to have done the same! Only the other day, an actress was saying that what she was most proud of in her art—next, of course, to having appeared in some provincial pantomime at the age of three—was the deftness with which she contrived, in parts demanding a rapid succession of emotions, to dab her cheeks quite quickly with rouge from the palm of her right hand or powder from the palm of her left. Gracious goodness! why do not we have masks upon the stage? Drama is the presentment of the soul in action. The mirror of the soul is the ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... fortune was playing into his hands. His four-days' acquaintance with the bard had been sufficient to show him that the man was there forty ways when it came to writing about love. You could open his collected works almost anywhere and shut your eyes and dab down your finger on some red-hot passage. A proposal of marriage is a thing which it is rather difficult to bring neatly into the ordinary run of conversation. It wants leading up to. But, if you once start reading poetry, especially ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... den, are indeed far from "tedious." There is a tendency in Scott to exalt into mountains "his own grey hills," the bosses verdatres as Prosper Merimee called them, of the Border. But the horrors of such linns as that down which Hab Dab and Davie Dinn "dang ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... for me —I can't get up courage enough to talk about this misfortune myself, except to you, whom by good luck I haven't damaged yet—that when the wreckage presently floats ashore he will get a good deal of his $500 back; and a dab at a time I will make up to ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... in two rows while Ruth and Helen passed out the good things. And my! they were good! Lovely chicken salad mayonnaise, served on a fresh lettuce leaf (the lettuce being smuggled in that very day in the chums' wash basket)—a little dab to each girl. There were little pieces of gherkins and capers in the mayonnaise, and Heavy reveled in this dish. The most delicious slices of pink ham between soft crackers—and other sandwiches of anchovy paste and minced sardines. These ...
— Ruth Fielding at Briarwood Hall - or Solving the Campus Mystery • Alice B. Emerson
... it to the great Lord Viscount Bolingbroke, who professes he studied it. I dare swear you will sincerely believe him when you read his celebrated works. I have got them for you, and intend to bring them. Oime! l'huomo. propone, Dio dispone. I hope you won't think this dab of Italian, that slid involuntarily from my pen, an affectation like his Gallicisms, or a rebellion against Providence, in imitation of his lordship, who I never saw but once in my life: he then appeared in a corner of the drawing-room, in the exact similitude of Satan when he was soliciting ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... reason totters on her throne—sometimes just a tiny tot, as the saying goes, or it may be that the whole cerebral structure is involved—and then when he is apparently all through the Demoniac Dabber comes back and dabs me one more fiendish, deliberate and premeditated dab, making nine hundred and seventy-five dabs in all. He has to do it; it's in the ritual that I and you and everybody must have that last dab. I wonder how many gibbering idiots there are in the asylum today whose reason ...
— Cobb's Anatomy • Irvin S. Cobb
... part of this scene; and when the curtain fell, people were so busy wiping their eyes that for a moment they forgot to applaud. That silent moment was more flattering than noise; and as Mrs Jo wiped the real tears off her sister's face, she said as solemnly as an unconscious dab of rouge on her ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... it, luckily. I was up pretty early this morning and was just about to leave the house, when a dab of snow—a couple of tons, maybe—came down and knocked off my chimney. I knew what that meant, and I didn't waste much time, you may be sure, in getting out. I grabbed my rifle and ran for it. I was hardly out of my door when the roar began, and you may guess how ...
— The Boys of Crawford's Basin - The Story of a Mountain Ranch in the Early Days of Colorado • Sidford F. Hamp
... sub-space energizer big enough to get it into sub-space and return it to normal. Then there is a small propulsor unit with just enough energy to send it to the center of that mess. Then it returns to normal space smack dab in the center of the core asteroid. And when the asteroid matter and the trigger body matter try to occupy the same space at the same ...
— Jack of No Trades • Charles Cottrell
... Michael Faraday, Nicholai Tesla, James Watt, Heinrich Hertz, Kepler, Copernicus, Galileo, and Henry Ford. The admissibility of this group of the world's scientific and the inventive leaders is shown here." Baker pointed to a minute dab of red ...
— The Great Gray Plague • Raymond F. Jones
... manager, striking his knee emphatically; 'without a pad upon his body, and hardly a touch of paint upon his face, he'd make such an actor for the starved business as was never seen in this country. Only let him be tolerably well up in the Apothecary in Romeo and Juliet, with the slightest possible dab of red on the tip of his nose, and he'd be certain of three rounds the moment he put his head out of the practicable door in the ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... are a species of grakle, and are lively and intelligent birds, some of them possessing a power of imitating human speech equal to any of the parrot tribe. They are very peculiar looking, grey in the body, with a black dab on the head, and a large bright yellow wattle just behind the eye. We pass the "miners" unmolested, for the minister tells me they are "no good" if you want eating, whilst as specimens they are ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... that would have been worth half a dozen jobs. I was lookin' for her to go white and begin bitin' her upper lip, like they usually does; but she ain't that kind—not on your nameplate! She just peels off the sleeve protectors, sets her side combs in firm, gives her face a dab or so with the rabbit's foot, and starts along after me, with that new antelope walk of hers, as easy and pleased as if she'd been asked to come to the ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford
... accompanying his two companions to the music-hall attached to the restaurant, and which he already knew by reputation as one of the lowest entertainments in London. "You two play," said Gus, "and I'll mark. You'll have to give Jack points, Tom, you know, you're such a dab." ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... almonds, 1 ounce; fluid potash, 1 drachm. Shake well together and then add rose-water, 1 ounce; pure water, 6 ounces. Mix. The mode of using these remedies is to rub the pimples for some minutes with a rough towel, and then dab them with the lotion. 4. Wash the face twice a day with warm water, and rub dry with a coarse towel. Then with a soft towel rub in a lotion made of two ounces of white brandy, one ounce of cologne, and one-half ounce ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... made on my mind that day undoubtedly influenced all my subsequent actions. Late in the evening, when the rush of visitors was largely over, I noticed a miserable bunch of boards, serving as a boat, with only a dab of tar along its seams, lying motionless a little way from us. In it, sitting silent, was a half-clad, brown-haired, brown-faced figure. After long hesitation, during which time I had been watching him from the ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... Mike, sir,' began Mrs Halloran, in a lachrymose voice, and paused to dab her eyes with a corner of her apron. 'Which I'm sure, sir, we ought to be very grateful to you for all your kindness and the trouble you're takin', and so says the boy's father. For he's growin' up more of a handful every day, and how to manage him ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... pot of rice often enough to prevent it from burning, and trying to rustle sufficient dry wood to keep the fire going. This diversity of interests certainly made him sit up and pay attention. At each instant he had to desert his flour-sack to rescue the coffee-pot, or to shift the kettle, or to dab hastily at the rice, or to stamp out the small brush, or to pile on more dry twigs. His movements were not graceful. They raised a scurry of dry bark, ashes, wood dust, twigs, leaves, and pine needles, a certain proportion of which ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... Porter's. His instructor would stand over him and tell him in a dozen words just exactly what entries to make in a customer's passbook. Porter would stare into oblivion during the lesson and when it was done make a dab at his ink-pot, enter up a cheque as credit, cross it out and make it a debit, then reverse the entry—all before Watson could interfere. The Bonehead was not slow; in fact, he was too rapid—but his swiftness was a serious detriment since the direction taken was usually wrong. Porter acted ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... course. But what I cannot understand is why the curtains are not taken down. Or they might be made shorter. It is such a queer noise that it gets on one's nerves. And now, Johanna, give me the little cape and put just a little dab of powder on my forehead. Or, better still, take the 'refresher' from my traveling bag—Ah, that is fine and refreshes me. Now I am ready to go over. He is still there, isn't he, ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... Salted-Mouth, otherwise Drink-without-Thirst, the brick of bricks, a dab hand at bolt forging, who wetted his iron every day with a pint and a half of brandy. He had gone out to have a drop, because he felt he wanted greasing to make him last till six o'clock. When he learnt that Little Zouzou's real name was Etienne, he thought ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... said Philip, dashing after a lovely butterfly, which kept on gently just before him for a time, and then settled nicely in reach upon a robin-run-rake by the hedge-side. Philip stole cautiously forward, cap in hand, and then made a dab down to secure the brightly-painted prize; but, with one or two flaps from those gorgeous wings, it was out of reach, over the palings, and away across the buttercup-gilded meadow on ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... immediate relief, and she gave an energetic dab at the ink-bottle; but after another interval of uncertain scratching she paused again. "Oh, it's fearful! I don't know what on earth to say. I wouldn't for the world have them know how beastly ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... for puff paste, you should take the greatest care to previously work it well on the paste-board or slab, to get out all the water and buttermilk, which very often remains in; when you have worked it well with a clean knife, dab it over with a soft cloth, and it is then ready to lay on your paste; do not make your paste over stiff before you ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... and mustard, my "stror" was a rainbow gone wrong; I ain't one who's ashamed of his colours, but likes 'em mixed middlingish strong. 'EMMY 'OPKINS, the fluffy-'aired daughter, a dab at a punt or canoe, Said I looked like a garden of dahlias, and showed up her neat ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 15, 1891 • Various
... a second attempt to drive away this very assured native. "As I was saying, Miss Dwight, I wouldn't mind going into Parliament, you know, if it weren't for the bally labor members. I'm rather strong on speaking—that sort of thing, you know. Used to be a dab at it. But I couldn't stand the bounders that get in nowadays. Really, ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... rays, diffusing abnormal heat through the atmosphere, reflected piercingly upward from the water, had played havoc with him. His first act upon landing was to seat himself upon a flat-topped boulder and dab tenderly at his smarting face while his men hauled up the canoe. That in itself was a measure of his inefficiency, as inefficiency is measured in the North. The Chief Factor of a district large enough to embrace a European kingdom, traveling ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... that her decorative preparations were restricted to a dab of violet-powder on her nose, and a slight application of lip-salve. "I can't let her go down such a figure," thought she, "though she is dreadfully angry with me," and, seizing a comb, began silently to effect a reformation in ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... there came a loud knock at the door; a single, solid dab of the knocker which Polton seemed to recognize, ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... the telephone interrupted with an announcement that Mr. Carson was waiting downstairs. Tony flew from the phone to dab powder ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... was announced, Polly happened to be talking, or trying to talk, to one of the "poky" gentlemen whom Fan had introduced. He took Miss Milton down, of course, put her in a corner, and having served her to a dab of ice and one macaroon, he devoted himself to his own supper with such interest, that Polly would have fared badly, if Tom had not come and ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... creatures, when they are once brought to understand that they are men,—not beasts! One will take a few words and harmonize them into a song or a verse that clings to the world for ever; another will mix a few paints and dab a brush in them, and give you a picture that generation after generation shall flock to see. It is what is called genius,—and genius is a sort of miracle. Yet I think it is fostered by climate a good deal,—the ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... consisted simply in putting a dab of printer's ink on one of the drumsticks at the very last moment before the seance began. The result could not prove physically injurious to the Medium, who had challenged investigation, nor to any one in the circle. The result was startling. Being accorded ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission
... sense as expressing Mr. Bumpkin's present condition. He had risen from the English peasantry, and was what is usually termed a "self-made man." He was born in a little hut consisting of "wattle and dab," and as soon as he could make himself heard was sent into the fields to "mind the birds." Early in the November mornings, immediately after the winter sowings, he would be seen with his little bag of brown bread round his neck, trudging along with a merry whistle, ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... began to feel very lonely. He'd no relations, and what friends he'd had in the old days had disappeared. So he got him a dog—this fool, a little white scrap of a dog with a black patch." The terrier recognized his name and made a dab at the firm chin. "Steady! Well, yes—you're right. It was a great move. For the little white dog was really a fairy prince in disguise—such a pretty disguise—and straightway led the fool into Paradise. Indeed, they were so happy ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... ventured upon. "Come, don't keep us all in suspense. I must hear you, don't you know; all the other fellows have heard you. So, please, get over the preliminaries, and let's come to the music. I'm awfully fond of music, especially singing. I'm a dab at that myself——" ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... of the species was in every way up to grade and sample. A happy combination of open air, open pores and open casegoods gave to his face the exact color of a slice of rare roast beef; it also had the expression of one. With a dab of English mustard in the lobe of one ear and a savory bit of watercress stuck in his hair for a garnish, he could have passed anywhere for a ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... little from his heavy shoulders in a perpetual short-sighted endeavour to look closer; you could see his eyes, large and clear under the watery wash of his glasses. His features, slightly flattened, were laid quietly back on his composed, candid face; the dab of docked moustache rising up in it like a strange note of ...
— The Romantic • May Sinclair
... washing, pulverizing and crushing, it is ready to be worked up into domestic and other utensils. Squatted upon the ground, the potter places in her lap a small basket, wood, or pottery base, upon which she places a "dab" of clay. This she thumbs and pats, until it forms the basis of the new vessel. Then another piece of clay is rapidly rolled between her hands, until it is in the form of along rope. This rope ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... the whole, then execute the parts. Fancy the fabric Quite ere you build, ere steel strike fire from quartz, Ere mortar dab brick. ...
— Rebuilding Britain - A Survey Of Problems Of Reconstruction After The World War • Alfred Hopkinson
... the brush of the breeches-maker and restorer, have so dealt with the Last Judgment that it is almost impossible to do it justice now. What Michelangelo intended by his scheme of colour is entirely lost. Not only did Daniele da Volterra, an execrable colourist, dab vividly tinted patches upon the modulated harmonies of flesh-tones painted by the master; but the whole surface has sunk into a bluish fog, deepening to something like lamp-black around the altar. Nevertheless, in its composition the fresco may still ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... prayers,' says he, 'an' hould your tongue,' says he, 'while I discoorse it,' says he. 'An' who are ye,' says he, 'in the name iv of all the holy saints?' says he, givin' the door a dab iv a crusheen that wakened Bill inside. 'I ax,' says he, ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume III. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... trades as were open to him in the Home Jan inclined to cabinet-making. It must be amusing to dab little bunches of bristles so deftly into little holes with hot pitch as to produce a hearth-brush, but as a life-work it does not satisfy ambition. For boot-making he felt no fancy, and the tailor's shop had a dash of corduroy and closeness ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... back with it. This little friend lived for three years with the prior, and to his great grief came no more in the fourth. The learned have exhausted their arts to discover what a burnet can be, and have given up the chase. Some would have him to be a barnacle goose, others a dab-chick or coot—none of which can fairly be classed as aviculae small birds. Burnet is brown or red brown, and rather bright at that. We have it in Chaucer's "Romaunt ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson
... fast as I cud, the room bein' empty. Then I tuk my boot an' the clanin'-rod and knocked out the pin av the fallin'-block. Oh, 'twas music when that pin rowled on the flure! I put ut into my pouch an' stuck a dab av dirt on the holes in the plate, puttin' the fallin'-block back. "That'll do your business, Vulmea," sez I, lyin' easy on the cot. "Come an' sit on my chest the whole room av you, an' I will take you to my bosom for the biggest divils ...
— Soldiers Three • Rudyard Kipling
... down Neptune: that old blackguard could no longer row out on the ship's port side and board her on the starboard, pretending to come from ocean's depths; and shave the novices with a rusty hoop and dab a soapy brush in their mouths. But champagne popped, the sexes flirted, and the sailors span fathomless yarns, and danced rattling hornpipes, fiddled to by the grave Fullalove. " If there is a thing I can dew, it's fiddle," said he. He and his friend, ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
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