"Poker" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... had gone about gawking in places he couldn't have had he been visible. Into the dressing room of the Roxie, into the bars of swank private clubs, into the offices of the F.B.I. He would have liked to have walked in on a poker game with some real high rollers playing, such as Nick the Greek, but he didn't have the time nor know-how ...
— The Common Man • Guy McCord (AKA Dallas McCord Reynolds)
... father," the man gasped, "I am telling you the truth. God strike me if I am not!" and he looked at the reddening poker ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... the fire. He had a long back like the long back of a tramhorse. He shook the poker gravely and nodded his head at the fellow out of ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... were in a huge stone hall hung all over with rusty armor, and seated on a great stone chair, snoring so loudly that all the steel helmets rattled, was a Knight. The tallest and crossest of the Pokes rushed at him with a long poker, giving him such a shove that he sprawled ...
— The Royal Book of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... a great deal of money hidden somewhere, and for its sake had nearly had his throat cut some two years ago: ever since then he carried his head thus. Over his eyes hung grayish eyebrows, and, looked at in profile, only his crooked nose was to be seen. His shadow reminded one of a poker. He denied that he had money, and said that they "only tried to cut his throat out of malice," and from that day he took to collecting rags, and that is why his head was always bent as if incessantly looking ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... ammonia (see page 94), or by the scraper and glass-paper. The indentations may be erased by dipping into hot water a piece of thick brown paper three or four times doubled and applying it to the part; the point of a red-hot poker should be immediately placed upon the wet paper, which will cause the water to boil into the wood and swell up the bruise; the thickness of the paper prevents the wood from being scorched by the hot poker. After the moisture is evaporated, ...
— French Polishing and Enamelling - A Practical Work of Instruction • Richard Bitmead
... took out a box of tooth-powder, and then he got a glove out of another drawer, and then he wet the glove and dipped it in the tooth-powder. Some of the powder stuck to the glove, and with this he began to rub the brass tops of the tongs and poker. ...
— Aunt Fanny's Story-Book for Little Boys and Girls • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... given a strange, coaxing little cry, such as a she-cat gives to her kittens. Pharaoh, lame and stiff, but with tail straight as a poker, was running to the window in the next room, was up on the sill, was rubbing against and caressing the haggard face ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... plunged it into the stove; then he made an opening in the wall, but so as to keep a thin coating of ice outside. His companions watched him. When the poker ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... stopped, and Lord Cadurcis bounded out with a light step and a lighter heart. His table was covered with letters. The first one that caught his eye was a missive from Lady Monteagle. Cadurcis seized it like a wild animal darting on its prey, tore it in half without opening it, and, grasping the poker, crammed it with great energy into the fire. This exploit being achieved, Cadurcis began walking up and down the room; and indeed he paced it for nearly a couple of hours in a deep reverie, and evidently under a considerable degree of excitement, ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... bar-room, to go upstairs. On the second floor there were two large rooms. From the hall I looked into the one on the front. There was a large, round table in the center, at which five or six men were seated playing poker. The air and conduct here were greatly in contrast to what I had just seen in the pool-room; these men were evidently the aristocrats of the place; they were well, perhaps a bit flashily, dressed and spoke in ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... poker on board ship," said I. "Our friend of the square jaw cuts in and, with the luck of an ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... looks like a longer shot than it is—something in the way of a genteel graft that isn't worked enough for the correspondence schools to be teaching it by mail. I take the long end; but I like to have at least as good a chance to win as a man learning to play poker on an ocean steamer, or running for governor of Texas on the Republican ticket. And when I cash in my winnings, I don't want to find any widows' and orphans' chips ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... abstract the necessary enlightenment from the questioner himself (while appearing to be perfectly conversant with what he is talking about), and, if possible, get him to suggest the answer to his own conundrum. In other words, bluff as in poker (which I trust you ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 3, 1917 • Various
... and he had seen that, though the Crows had waved a red-hot poker before History's nose, they had quickly substituted a very cold rod to thrust down his back. The effect on the nerves of the blindfolded boy, however, was the same as if it had been red-hot, and he had dropped to ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... in alarm to his slumbering frau, "Thar's a bar in the kitchen as big's a cow!" "A what?" "Why, a bar!" "Well murder him, then!" "Yes, Betty, I will, if you'll first venture in." So Betty leaped up, and the poker she seized. While her man shut the door, and against it he squeezed, As Betty then laid on the grizzly her blows. Now on his forehead, and now on his nose, Her man through the key-hole kept shouting within, "Well done, my brave ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... life, grew less and less. He felt attracted to the outer world, but did not think she would care to go along. Once he went to the theatre alone. Another time he joined a couple of his new friends at an evening game of poker. Since his money-feathers were beginning to grow again he felt like sprucing about. All this, however, in a much less imposing way than had been his wont in Chicago. He avoided the gay places where he would be apt to meet those who had known him. Now, Carrie began to feel ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... room, stepped to the fireplace and picked up a poker—a small one with a crook at the end. "Will this help?" she asked, ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... waddy is: it is formed like a large kitchen poker, and nearly as heavy, only much shorter in the handle. The iron-bark wood, of which it is made, is very hard, and ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... poker from the kitchen to keep off the dogs, and went out into the yard, leaving the door open. The snow-storm had subsided and it was calm outside. . . . When he went out at the gate, the white plain looked dead, and there was not a single bird in the morning sky. On both sides of the road and in ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Billy and Bridge found themselves was a small one in the center of which was a large round table at which were gathered a half-dozen men at poker. Above the table swung a single arc lamp, casting a garish light ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... mind very soon began to produce fruit. Almost immediately he commenced experimenting on his own account. Obtaining a room in his father's house for the purpose, he began by constructing a cylinder electric machine in a very primitive way. A glass tube served for the cylinder; a poker hung up by silk threads, as in the very oldest forms of electric machine, was the prime conductor; and for a Leyden jar he went back to the old historical jar of Cunaeus, and used a bottle half filled with water, standing in an outer vessel, which ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 363, December 16, 1882 • Various
... proposals—pleasant, sober-faced Phil coming in with his burden of afternoon papers—or Jo, or Charley (who jump'd in the dock last week, and saved a stout lady from drowning,) to replenish the stove, and clearing it with long crow-bar poker. ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... heat is founded on a very simple matter. It is quite obvious that a heated body tends to grow cold. I am not now speaking of fires or of actual combustion whereby heat is produced; I am speaking merely of such heat as would be possessed by a red-hot poker after being taken from the fire, or by an iron casting after the metal has been run into the mould. In such cases as this the general law holds good, that the heated body tends to grow cold. The cooling may be retarded ...
— Time and Tide - A Romance of the Moon • Robert S. (Robert Stawell) Ball
... verge of human endurance, and upsetting tongs, poker, and fire-shovel.—"What nonsense you are talking, all of you! For heaven's sake, consider what an important matter we are called upon to decide. It is not now the titles of those very respectable works which issued from the ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... sufficient number of persons have made forfeits, the business of redeeming them commences, which may afford any amount of amusement. He, or she, as the case happens, may be ordered to "kiss the four corners of the room;" "bite an inch off the poker;" "kneel to the prettiest, bow to the wittiest, and kiss the one he (or she) loves best," or any one of a dozen similarly silly ordeals, as the doomster proposes, may have to be gone through. When the forfeits have all been redeemed ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... of gruel (Scrooge had a cold in his head) upon the hob. Nobody under the bed; nobody in the closet; nobody in his dressing-gown, which was hanging up in a suspicious attitude against the wall. Lumber-room as usual. Old fire-guard, old shoes, two fish-baskets, washing-stand on three legs, and a poker. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... tortured bodies. One or two Irishmen anathematized the doctors with the frankness of their nation, and ordered the Virgin to stand by them, as if she had been the wedded Biddy to whom they could administer the poker, if she didn't; but, as a general thing, the work went on in silence, broken only by some quiet request for roller, instruments, or plaster, a sigh from the patient, or a sympathizing murmur ...
— Hospital Sketches • Louisa May Alcott
... Bartley took the poker in his hand and proceeded to poke the fire; but somehow he did not look at the fire. He looked askant at Monckton, and he showed the white of his eyes more and more. Monckton kept his eye upon him and put his hand upon ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... should have taken the poker. I went over cautiously to one of the windows, wading in deep snow to get there—and if you have ever done that in a pair of bedroom slippers you can realize the state of ...
— Where There's A Will • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... reading. If I would confine it to valuable books, they are almost as rare as valuable men. I must be content with what I can find. As I approach a second childhood, I endeavour to enter into the pleasures of it. Your youngest son is perhaps at this very moment riding on a poker with great delight, not at all regretting that it is not a gold one, and much less wishing it an Arabian horse which he would not know how to manage. I am reading an idle tale, not expecting wit or truth in it, and am very glad it is not metaphysics to puzzle my judgment, or ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... triumphantly; "and so shall I stick him, by the holy poker, afore the end of the week is out. I've a-been fool enough to leave off ropesending of him now for a matter of two years, because 'a was good, and outgrowing of it like, and because you always coom between us. But mind you, mother, I'll have none of that, next ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... everything in its practical essence. Idealism only means that we should consider a poker in reference to poking before we discuss its suitability for wife-beating; that we should ask if an egg is good enough for practical poultry-rearing before we decide that the egg is bad enough for practical politics. But I know that this primary pursuit of the theory (which is but ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... a gallon av rum thin a flip I created, Shwate, wid musthard and shpice; and the poker I hated As rid as a guinea jist out av the mint— And into her shtomick, begorra, it wint! Och, niver belave me, but didn't she roar! I'd have kaped her alive wid a quart or two more; And the thray ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... sharply as he spoke, but long sessions at poker in the San Francisco Press Club had taught me how to control my facial muscles, and I never batted an eye. He ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... dragged myself to a little clump of sassafras, not caring much whether I lived or died, I was that played out, and my leg burning and stinging just as though it was being touched up with a red-hot poker. I had been there about fifteen minutes when a blue-coat rose up in front of me—right out of the ground it seemed—and says, very fierce, 'You're my prisoner!' He was a young fellow, about my age, and ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... professional curiosity about me. This case is such an extraordinary one, that I feel as if I were unable to let slip an opportunity of doing something with it. I don't care for your humdrum murders with the poker, and all that sort of thing, but this is something clever, and therefore interesting. When you are safe we will look together for the real criminal, and the pleasure of the search will be proportionate to the excitement when ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... so that it shall last—ugh, ugh—last the whole day." Here his vehemence increased his cough so violently, that Nigel could only, from a scattered word here and there, comprehend that it was a recommendation to his daughter to remove the poker and tongs from the stranger's fireside, with an assurance, that, when necessary, his landlord would be in attendance to adjust ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... accordingly directed his steps. The key turned out to be quite superfluous, for the hasp of the lock had been broken by Walter's predecessor, who had also left the trace of his name, his likeness, and many interesting though inexplicable designs and hieroglyphics, with a red-hot poker, on the lid. The same gentleman, to judge by appearances, must have had a curious entomological collection of spiders and earwigs under his protection, and had bequeathed to Walter a highly miscellaneous legacy of rubbish. Walter contemplated his bequest with ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... were over-boiled. And the deposition against Dorothy Doolittle runs in these words—That if she had so far usurped the dominion of the coal fire (the stirring whereof her husband claimed to himself) that by her good will she never would suffer the poker out ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 482, March 26, 1831 • Various
... woman, his wife, stood still, poker in hand, waiting to be told who it was that her husband had brought home so unceremoniously; but, as she looked in amazement, the girl's cheek flushed, and then blanched to a dead whiteness; a film came over her eyes, ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... little strolls about the hotel lobbies by herself, and on her train journeys, when the motion and the odor of the men's pipes didn't make her too sick, she'd kneel upon a seat and look over the back of it into one of the perpetual poker-games they used to pass the time. It was astonishing ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... To play at poker, warns you against evil company; and young women, especially, will lose their moral distinctiveness if they find themselves engaged in ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... out. Go 'long there with you!" cried Captain Ben, waving the dish-cloth and the poker. "I declare for 't! I most hadn't ought to have left that bread out on the table. They've made a pretty mess of it, and it is every spec there is in the house too. Well, I must make a do of potatoes for supper, with a bit of pie and a ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... the "poker gang" in Rockland, and he knew there were a few desperate fellows among those who made up the gang. He had "dropped his roll" in Rockland once when he struck the town with an idea in his head that he was "getting against a lot of jays," and on that occasion he became friendly ...
— Frank Merriwell's Cruise • Burt L. Standish
... you. Reading the Riot Act and then assaulting them with a poker is not the best way of getting the Bailiffs out of a house. Try gentle persuasion. If you have recently had a case of black typhus in the house, you might mention the fact to them, and see what ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 1, 1891 • Various
... use of the poker should be confined to two particular points—the opening of a dying fire, so as to admit the free passage of the air into it, and sometimes, but not always, through it; or else, drawing together the remains of a half-burned fire, so as to ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... of convivial habits, and used to poke considerable fun at me because I would not drink or play poker. At the time when the select committee was to meet in Memphis, the home of Senator Harris, the prominent business men of that place waited on him and told him they understood a very eminent committee was coming there in a few days, and they would like to show them some courtesies. Harris replied ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... at the inn, accused of too lavish a use of smiles, too much kindness—most likely a jealous tale only—aroused their righteous ire. With shawm and timbrel and ram's-horn trumpet—i.e. with cow's horns, poker and tongs, and tea-trays—the indignant and high-toned population collected night after night by the tavern, and made such fearful uproar that the poor girl, really quite innocent, had to leave her situation. Nothing could be more charitable, more truly righteous, ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... bridge, he did not care for music, for books, for pictures. He played poker, and sometimes tennis, and often golf; a selfish, solitary game of golf, in which he cared only for his own play and his own score, and paid no ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... absolute perfection; while ours, at best, is only relative. A needle may be a perfect needle, in every respect adapted for the work for which it was made. It is not, however, a microscopic object; under magnifying power it becomes a rough, honeycombed poker, with a ragged hole in the place of the eye. But it was not made to be a microscopic object; and, being adapted to the purpose for which it was made, it may properly be considered a perfect needle. So we are not ...
— A Ribband of Blue - And Other Bible Studies • J. Hudson Taylor
... at the huge poker that graced the fireplace, in whose rusty grate a cheerful fire had not been kindled for many years. Anthony's quick eye detected the movement, and he took possession of the dangerous weapon with the ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... The chef grunted and got up from the poker game which was raging. "Come wid me." He led the Wildcat into the kitchen of the car. From one of the cupboards against the partition he lifted a pint bottle full of a light yellow fluid. He poured some of this into a smaller bottle. Out of another bottle containing a brown aromatic ...
— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley
... the mace beside him, and he gripped it hard and fast, And he swung it starkly upwards as the foeman bounded past; And the deadly stroke descended through the skull and through the brain, As ye may have seen a poker ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... few thousand which he had invested for her, and she felt wuz safe, but he took that to run away with a bally girl, and squandered it all on her and died on the town. My eldest sister's husband beat her with a poker, and throwed her out of a three-story front in San Francisco, and she landin' on a syringea tree wuz saved to git a divorce from him and also from her second and third husbands for cruelty, after which she gave up matrimony and opened a boarding-house, bitter in spirit, but a ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... stepped into the main street of Poker Flat on the morning of the 23d of November, 1850, he was conscious of a change in its moral atmosphere since the preceding night. Two or three men, conversing earnestly together, ceased as he approached, ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... sporty way a man does when he pretends that he's going to take a night off with the boys and play poker. ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... mostly from Virginia and their whisky came wholly from Kentucky. Their cotton brought a high price in the Liverpool market, their daughters were celebrated for beauty, and their sons could hold their own with the poker players that traveled up and down the Mississippi River. The slave trade had been abolished, and, therefore, what remained of slavery was right; and in proof of it the pulpit contributed its argument. Negro preachers with wives scattered throughout the ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... sitting by the fire—it was a cold evening—and stretched out his hand that way, and just then the fire-irons, or at least the poker, fell over towards him with a great clatter, and I did not hear what else he said. But I told him that I could not easily conceive of an arrangement, as he called it, of such a kind that would not include as one of its conditions a heavier ...
— A Thin Ghost and Others • M. R. (Montague Rhodes) James
... I was right as to the way to play that supposititious poker hand. Grim had doped him out too, and answered promptly without changing a muscle ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... pelisse of slate-blue stiff silk, lined with squirrel, and a jupe of deep red foreign crepe, lined with ermine. Resplendent with pearl-powder and with cosmetics, she sat in there, stately and majestic, with a small brass poker in her hands, with which she was stirring the ashes of the hand-stove. P'ing Erh stood by the side of the couch, holding a very small lacquered tea-tray. In this tray was a small tea-cup with a cover. Lady Feng neither took any ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... devout, but not without his literary vanity, especially on the Whistonian theory about second marriages. One admires his virtuous indignation against the "washes," which he deliberately demolished with the poker. In his prosperity his chief "adventures were by the fireside, and all his migrations were from the blue bed to ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... told myself first thing," he added, taking up the poker and tapping the bright little stove with it; "I told myself she would be marryin' one of the boys most likely; I kep' that in mind steady, as you may say. I thought I was so used to the idee that it wouldn't jar me much of any when it come to the fact. But it did; ...
— The Wooing of Calvin Parks • Laura E. Richards
... had better go; but in my time we all used to enjoy it so much. (Aside.) And perhaps, after all, the red-hot poker business is rather stale at the end of the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 27, 1890 • Various
... to report that there was much killing and misery everywhere, and that in June, upon Corpus Christi day, the Conde de Tohil Vaca was taken, and murdered, with rather horrible jocosity which used unusually a heated poker, and Manuel's ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... to open my eyes, and saw something long and black crawl off my bed and slip under the berth. Such a shriek as I gave, my dear! "A snake! a snake! oh, a snake!" And everybody began talking at once, and some of the gentlemen swearing, and the porter came running with the poker to kill it; and all the while it was that ridiculous switch of mine, that had worked out of my pocket. And glad enough I was to grab it up before anybody saw it, and say I must ...
— The Sleeping Car - A Farce • William D. Howells
... and I concluded that they came from outside. Then suddenly, about five minutes later, there came a most horrible yell—the most dreadful sound, Mr. Holmes, that ever I heard. It will ring in my ears as long as I live. I sat frozen with horror for a minute or two. Then I seized the poker and went downstairs. When I entered this room I found the window wide open, and I at once observed that the bust was gone from the mantelpiece. Why any burglar should take such a thing passes my understanding, for it was only ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... life of the border country. Dark-skinned Mexicans rubbed shoulders with range riders baked almost as brown by the relentless sun. Pima Indians and Chinamen and negroes crowded round the faro and dice tables. Games of monte and chuckaluck had their devotees, as had also roulette and poker. ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... fast, Dick. It's merely some special work tonight, what you would call trick photography. I need a photographer, some lights, a little space, a microscopic lens and the complete developing during the night. And, I'll pay cash, as I have done with some suspicious poker losses in this temple of the muses on bygone evenings. Which, I may urge with gentle sarcasm is more than I have frequently received ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... the telephone and found Bates standing beside him. That stolid and worthy ex-noncommissioned officer was armed with a red-hot poker. Henceforth his employer saw pretense ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... we to get at it? Annie came in from the kitchen armed with a poker. We took out the damper and poked out all the soot and ashes. We brought to the front—what do you think? Why, a little bird, a chimney swallow, chirping and fluttering, poor thing, ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... sober; and then I've followed him round here, wobblin' and corkscrewin' all over the sidewalk; and then I've seen him stiffen up in the office again, and go through his bath like a little man, and get into bed as drunk as a fish; and may be wake up in the night with the man with the poker after him, and make things hum. Well, sir, one night there was a drunk in here that thought the man with the poker was after him, and he just up and jumped out of this window behind you—three stories from ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... "The poker has been good enough for you for fifty years," I retorted. "And if you think you look sporty, or anything but idiotic, sitting there in a flowered kimono and swabbing out ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... painfully prosperous. Neither the Clothworkers' Inn nor the Corporation Arms looked a pleasant stopping-place, and the humble inn we finally selected for a brief rest proved to be about as gay as a family vault, with a landlady who had all the characteristics of a poker except its occasional warmth, as the Liberator said of another stiff and formal person. Whether she was Scot or Saxon I know not; she was certainly not Celt, and certainly no Barney McCrea of her day would have kissed ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... epilepsy of seven months' standing, from depression of the skull caused by a red hot poker thrown at the subject's head. Striking the frontal bone just above the orbit, it entered three inches into the cerebral substance. Kesteven reports the history of a boy of thirteen who, while holding a fork in his hand, fell from the top of a load of straw. One of ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... realize the silent, subtle, ever-present perils of life. And if you be a philosopher, though seated in the whale-boat, you would not at heart feel one whit more of terror, than though seated before your evening fire with a poker, and not a ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... the sufferings of the children,—for example those of Maggie Scully, when she said: "I do all the work at my aunt's house, and if you do not believe that I have been beaten, look at me, for my aunt has beaten me this morning with a poker." Adjoining the offices are the rooms for the officers and the archives of the institution, containing the papers in each case setting forth the facts and the evidence. On the upper floor is a dormitory, where the children are kept until final disposition is made of them, that is to say, ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 2, November, 1884 • Various
... him. It has been hard to see with Hamburg eyes what Count Bernstorff must know—that hardly a diplomat alive could have stayed so long on friendly terms with Washington, through these two years, or reaped so heavy a harvest of understanding from his study of poker and baseball as well as American commerce and institutions. People like to write—I, too—of his melancholy eyes, his gently cynical estimates of most dreamers' hopes. Over one circumstance he has been always hopeful. He has clung always to the hope that America ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... hear nothing," and began to cry more copiously. He got up, and said he would take the poker and punish every one of them—that he would. The strange visitor made for the door, and, like all the rest, said, as he disappeared, ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam
... the poker and poked the fire as if his life depended on it. But when the banging and clattering was over Garvey continued his remarks with the same calmness. The next sentence, however, was never finished. The secretary had got upon his ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... were sitting in a corner at Bowler's when we heard a Greaser—a Mexican, you know—that Parker had refused to play poker with the night before ask who the senorita was that had taken the spirit out ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... who's standing there butting in on the private talk of two gents?" he asked the engineer. "Hand me that grate-poker—the hot one. I'll show ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... seeing a red hot poker, or fighting with one, signifies that you will meet trouble ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... spender, the crowd drifted back to the tables; friendly games of coon-can sprang up; stud poker was resumed; and a crew of railroad men, off duty, looked out at the sluicing waters and idly wondered whether the track would go out—the usual thing in Arizona. After the first delirium of joy at seeing it ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... of his pony, he grows his hair, goes on the stage bustin' glass balls with shot ca'tridges and talks about 'press notices.' Let's see 'em, Billings. You pinch 'em as close to your stummick as though you held cards in a strange poker game." ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... or less clogged, and it was early the next morning when the regiment to which the preacher belonged was entrained. During the early part of the night the men were gathered in groups, some playing "shuffle the brogan," others busy at "nosey poker," while the greater part of them were smoking their pipes and telling yarns, or stretching their weary limbs on rolls of canvas, or on ...
— Bamboo Tales • Ira L. Reeves
... a lower Drawer in his Library, looking for a Box of Poker Chips, he came upon a Roll of Manuscript and wondered what it was. He opened it and read how it was the Duty of all True Americans to hop into the Arena and struggle unselfishly for the General Good. It came to him in a Flash—this ...
— More Fables • George Ade
... English pantomime—clown, columbine, and so on. I saw one when I left England at twelve years old, and it's blazed in my brain like a bonfire ever since. I came back to the old country only last year, and I find the thing's extinct. Nothing but a lot of snivelling fairy plays. I want a hot poker and a policeman made into sausages, and they give me princesses moralising by moonlight, Blue Birds, or something. Blue Beard's more in my line, and him I like best when ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... know! I've got some poker hand myself," opined the dealer. "Discard one, to make a five-card hand, and I bet you ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... of them. One had never been to college, and another knew nothing of automobiles, and another began talking about the drill regulations, but you know I never even bought the book. The whole train was one big smoking car, and some fellows near me were very noisy over a game of poker. ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... Messer Ramiro d' Orco, 'a man cruel and quick of action, to whom he gave the fullest power.' A story is told of Messer Ramiro which illustrates his temper in a very bizarre fashion: he one day kicked a clumsy page on to the fire, and held him there with a poker till he was burned up. Acting after this fashion, with plenipotentiary authority, Ramiro soon froze the whole province into comparative tranquillity. But it did not suit Cesare to incur the odium which the man's cruelty brought on his administration. Accordingly he had ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... doubt of it your honour. It's the thief of the world who murdered us all, and by the holy poker ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... guests were several young fellows of the fashionable set, rich men's sons and their parasites, a few of the big down town operators who hadn't yet got hipped on "respectability"—they playing poker in a private room—and a couple of flush-faced, flush-pursed chaps from out of town, for whom one of Joe's men was dealing faro from what looked to my experienced and accurate ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... sign of ascending, his master dived down to him, leaving me vis-a-vis with the ruffianly bitch and half a dozen four-footed fiends that suddenly broke into a fury, while I parried off the attack with a poker and called aloud ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... his Vicar of Wakefield has charmed all Europe. What reader is there in the civilised world, who is not the better for the story of the washes which the worthy Dr. Primrose demolished so deliberately with the poker—for the knowledge of the guinea which the Miss Primroses kept unchanged in their pockets—the adventure of the picture of the Vicar's family, which could not be got into the house— and that of the Flamborough family, all painted with oranges ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... Mary Ellen, "is young Watlin. Call him up instantly; and he shall guard the door while I dress. Explain the situation very briefly to him. It would be well to arm him with a poker, in case the old man becomes violent. David, go to Bishop Torrance and tell him that I hope he will call on me at once, if possible. Put on your clothes, but you may leave your hair in disorder, just as it is. It will serve to show the Bishop ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... with still flashing eyes. The moment her mother had finished the letter, she walked swiftly to the fire, tearing the letter as she went, and thrust it between the bars, pushing it in fiercely with the poker, and muttering— ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... personal expenditure, he is at the same time of dissipated and disorderly habits; the associate of the poker-playing, and cock-fighting, fraternity of the neighbourhood; one of its wildest spirits, without any of those generous traits oft coupled with ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... replied the man, "an ey hope yo may be able to deliver me. Yo mun knoa, that somehow ey wor unlucky enough last Yule to offend Mother Chattox, an ever sin then aw's gone wrang wi' me. Th' good-wife con never may butter come without stickin' a redhot poker into t' churn; and last week, when our brindlt sow farrowed, and had fifteen to t' litter, an' fine uns os ever yo seed, seign on um deed. Sad wark! sad wark, mesters. The week efore that t' keaw deed; ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... wrap her baby in cotton, which is held in place by means of a roller bandage, and as you visit this home during the first week of baby's life, you will be handed a little mummy-shaped creature—straight as a little poker—all wrapped up in cotton and a roller bandage. The surprising feature is that the baby does not ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... poked. I feel sure of that. Do take the poker and give them one blow. That will make you at home in the house for ever, you know." Then he handed the implement to Marion. She could hardly do other than take it in her hand. She took it, blushed up to the roots ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... yes; or on the bench, and perhaps also behind counters; but they very seldom do so in a drawing-room. You have been fidgeting about with the poker till you have destroyed the look ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... of life, Without some small attempt at strife, Our nature will not grovel; One impulse hadd both man and dame, He seized the tongs—she did the same, Leaving the ruffian, if he came, The poker and the shovel. Suppose the couple standing so, When rushing footsteps from below Made pulses fast and fervent; And first burst in the frantic cat, All steaming like a brewer's rat, And then—as white ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... away the preacher's words with a firm and all-wise hand. "You see, in my constant contact at the store I know 'em all the way down to the ground. They are the most ungodly pack on earth. Most of 'em drink and play poker, an' never look inside of a Bible. The fact is, if I may be allowed to speak of it at such a time, I happened myself, awhile back, to buy a whopping big tent from a stranded show. I thought at the time that some such a need as this might arise, and so I bid it in. To get it, I had to pay for a lot ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... the two men, and into the kitchen. There they found Patty standing on a side table, armed with a long poker, while Mona danced about on the large table, brandishing a broom in one hand and a mop in the other. Patty was in paroxysms of laughter at Mona's antics, but Mona herself was in terror of her life, and yelled like ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells
... scene of drunkenness, gambling, brawling and fighting, so long as the money and credit of the trappers last. Seated Indian fashion around the fires, with a blanket spread before them, groups are seen with their 'decks' of cards playing at 'euchre,' 'poker,' and 'seven-up,' the regular mountain games. The stakes are beaver, which is here current coin; and when the fur is gone, their horses, mules, rifles and shirts, hunting packs and breeches are staked. Daring gamblers make the rounds of the camp, ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... dogs, sir!" Mrs. Green's tone was full of shrill amazement. "Kill Binks? I'd like to see anyone try." . . . Vane had a momentary vision of his stalwart old landlady armed with a poker and a carving knife, but ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... I mean that either you or I will never leave this place alive. For I tell you plainly, as sure as there is a poker game above us, I mean to ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... to hear that," says Sir Maurice, in a tone that is absolutely raging. He moves up the room, as he speaks, to the fire—a small fire, it is still a little chilly—and terribly close to the screen. Indeed, as he stoops to lift the poker and break the coals, his elbow touches the ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... 'Me own business! Poker o' Moses! and ain't it me own business? Haven't ye spilte my tenderest hopes? And good luck to ye in that same, for ye're as pretty a rider as ever kicked coping-stones out of a wall; and poor Paddy loves a sportsman by nature. Och! ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... old-fashioned, I daresay. I'm no longer in the movement. I might have been amused once by the story of a clandestine tea-party and an outraged parent with a poker; I don't know. All I do know is, that I find it rather dreary at present. We'll drop in at just one or two more places, Sir, and then go quietly home to bed, eh?" They entered a few more Music Halls, and found the entertainment ...
— Punch Among the Planets • Various
... have taken the well-dressed "poker" as our ideal of masculine "good form" in society, English men and women always seem to exude an atmosphere of "slouching" indifference to everything except their God—and football. It has such a very chilling effect upon exuberant foreigners ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... children. Then Anthea dried her eyes. She looked round her and caught up the poker. She ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... the playing of whist, domino, or poker are often given by bachelors at their apartments or residences. In apartments this class of entertainment is only for men. Women should not go to bachelors' apartments except for luncheon, dinner, or supper. In a bachelor's house, however, any entertainment can be given. Small stakes ...
— The Complete Bachelor - Manners for Men • Walter Germain
... state right here that my father and I were more like a couple of chums at school together than like father and son. We fished together, shot together, played ball together, poker together and I regret to say that we fought together. In the early days I got rather the worst of these arguments, but later on I managed to hold my own and sometimes to get even a shade the better ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... friend had referred to. On my arrival, both our servants were up. My hands and clothes were dyed with blood, and they looked at me with astonishment. I ran hastily upstairs, to avoid them, and took the writing-desk, the key of which I knew hung to his watch-chain. Seizing the poker, I split it open, and took out the packet he mentioned. At this moment his ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... By the poker, I'm boilin' with passion Whin I think of the laws that they make; At a fair the bhoys heads ye can't smash in, Nor get dacently dhrunk at a wake. There's only twelve pince in a shillin', And not more than two pints in a quart, Onless you are cliver at fillin', And can make it hould more than it ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, March 18, 1893 • Various
... continued a huge clattering at the poker and tongs, puffing and blowing the while, and turning as red as his yellow face would allow him. "I can't make you such handsome presents, Joseph," continued his sister, "but while I was at school, I have embroidered for you a very beautiful pair ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Jason. He stopped hammering. He stopped thumping. He stopped boiling poor Ezra's hoof with a red hot poker. "Eh?" he said all over again. "Well, that's a new one on me! What's ...
— Fairy Prince and Other Stories • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... "Poker stacks continue to have a downward tendency. They were sold last week as low as eighty chips for a dollar; It is sad to see this noble game dragging along in the lower levels of prosperity, and we take as a favourable omen the appearance of Uncle Peter ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... to the fire, and thrust the poker through it with much zest. He longed to get out of the room, but he was a little ashamed before his inner self, as well as before his uncle, to run away immediately after pocketing the money. Presently, the farm-bailiff came up to give ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... I thought not, and then asked him what was the cause of his strange disguise and his unexpected appearance in Des Moines. He told me that he had got into some trouble about a game of poker in Leadville, and that he had shot and perhaps killed a notorious gambler in that city. He wished me to help him, as he was hiding from the officers who were after him, until the affair blew over. He seemed particularly anxious that I should help him to get away. Upon asking him how ...
— The Burglar's Fate And The Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... the day, "a little soul of Christian fire" until it goes to a public school. And there it straddled, two scarlet cheeks puffed out with rage, soft flaxen hair streaming, cerulean eyes glowing, the poker grasped in two chubby fists. It had poked a window in vague ire, and now threatened two females with extinction if they ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... person of the party, gentle reader, is your humble servant, Thomas Poker, Esquire, a native of Nova Scotia, and a retired member of the Provincial bar. My name will seldom appear in these pages, as I am uniformly addressed by both my companions as "Squire," nor shall I have to perform the disagreeable task of "reporting my own speeches," ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... evolutions of the awful beast permitted, I caught a glance of her features. She appeared to be very much interested in the proceedings; but the instant that the mud flew, she disappeared from the window, and a moment later she appeared on the stoop with a long poker in her hand, and fire enough in her eye ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various
... said Nan, "in order to run fast. It was the woolly dog that thought of it," she added, and she would have stooped down to pat the toy dog, with its red morocco collar, but she was so high up that she found it a difficult matter to bend down. "I am as stiff as a poker," said she. ...
— Little Folks (December 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... of a Virginia reel, played by a piano and a fiddle. The drawing of Chinese lottery had just taken place, and the luckiest player, having cashed at the scales, was drinking up his winnings with half a dozen cronies. The faro- and roulette-tables were busy and quiet. The draw-poker and stud-poker tables, each with its circle of onlookers, were equally quiet. At another table, a serious, concentrated game of Black Jack was on. Only from the craps-table came noise, as the man who played rolled the dice, full sweep, down the green amphitheater of a table in pursuit ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... friends they probably present you with a few from time to time. I have never noticed any pictures in a German kitchen, but there are nearly always Sprueche both in the kitchen, and the dining-room and sometimes in the hall: rhyming maxims that are done in poker work or painted on wood and hung in ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... little apartment, which Mrs. Stanhope had just begun to fill with flowers for the coming winter. Tom came behind her, carrying a poker ...
— The Rover Boys out West • Arthur M. Winfield
... she covered the table, and taking a package, she carried it on a couple of aluminium pie pans to where her fire was burning crisply. With a small field axe she chopped a couple of small green branches, pointed them to her liking, and peeled them. Then she made a poker from one of the saplings they had used to move the rocks, and beat down her fire until she had a bright bed of deep coals. When these were arranged exactly to her satisfaction, she pulled some sprays of deer weed bloom from her bundle and, going down ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... gratified and every sense employed. Then how jovial and pleasant it would appear to see perched up in front a John Bull-looking fellow in a snow-white jacket, with a night-cap and apron of the same, a carving-knife in a case by his side, and a poker in his hand to stir up the steam-furnace, or singe a highwayman's wig, should any one attack the coach; this indeed would be an improvement worthy of the age, and call forth the warmest and most grateful tributes of applause from all ranks in society. For myself, I have always endeavoured to ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... there are men who have come there to escape restraint. Cutter was one of the "fast set" of Black Hawk business men. He was an inveterate gambler, though a poor loser. When we saw a light burning in his office late at night, we knew that a game of poker was going on. Cutter boasted that he never drank anything stronger than sherry, and he said he got his start in life by saving the money that other young men spent for cigars. He was full of moral maxims for boys. When he came to our house on business, he quoted "Poor Richard's Almanack" ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... began to stir faintly in Sammy's breast. If they were going away together, it should be his "treat." He marched into the house, smashed his bank with the kitchen poker, and came out with a pocket full of silver and nickels that looked as if they amounted to much more ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill
... constantly together. They played tennis and ping-pong in the day, and in the evening, in accordance with the stiff routine of the place, they sat down with the Earl and Countess to twenty-five-cent poker, and later still they sat together on the verandah and watched the moon sweeping in great circles ...
— Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... wine in him as I've got. That I'd swear. Ha! ha! I come out for an airing after every act, and there's a whole pitfall of ticketers yelling and tearing, and I chaff my way through and back clean as a red-hot poker." ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... on the hearthrug, grasping the poker firmly in one hand. Now and again she gave the fire a truculent prod with it as ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... will see and deliver your reverence from the Philistines." But though he laughed in Sampson's presence, and strove to put a good face upon the matter, Harry's head sank down on his chest when the parson quitted him, and he sate over the fire, beating the coals about with the poker, and giving utterance to many disjointed naughty words, which showed, but did not relieve, the agitation of ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... from top to toe. "I have felt this strange feeling before," said he, "I cannot help thinking there's something wrong about that closet." He made a strong effort, plucked up his courage, shivered the lock with a blow or two of the poker, opened the door, and there, sure enough, standing bolt upright in the corner, was the last tenant, with a little bottle clasped firmly in his hand, and his face—well!' As the little old man concluded, he looked round on the ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... repaired to a nearby house, borrowed a red hot poker, and returning to the hall, bored two peep-holes through another shutter, while an enterprising companion pried open a third window, thus giving a full view of the pictures to all who were fortunate enough to ...
— Peggy-Alone • Mary Agnes Byrne
... dour face. For a moment she was glad; then she lifted the poker, and struck a block of coal into a score of pieces, and with the blow scattered the unkind, selfish thoughts which had ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... had gone back to the fields again. All the idlers had fled to the cafes, and as the deputy walked smartly by in front of these, warm waves of air came out upon him through the windows, with the clatter of poker chips, the noise of billiard balls, and the uproar ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... to each spectral Grim— Mind, we address no bibbing smoker! Tell not us 'tis as broad as it's long, We've no breadth more than a leathern thong Tanned—or a tarnished poker: Ye are also lank and slim?— Your king he comes of an ancient line Which "length without breadth" the Gods define, And look ye follow him! Lanky lieges! the Gods one day Will cut off this line, as geometers say, Equal to any given line:— PI,—PE—their ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... almost automatically. After a moment he laid down the poker, and drew the chair with her in it close to the fender. Then he picked up the cloak and put it about her shoulders, and finally moved away ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell |
