Now for a fire-stick and we'll see if the weed has lost its cunning.

Amused by the conceit, Lanyard laid hold of the knob with steady, delicate fingertips that had not yet, in spite of years of honourable idleness, forgotten their cunning.

I'll first try my cunning otherwise, and if all fail, we'll try this conclusion.

Having thus rescued Afrásiyáb, the wary chief exercised all his cunning and adroitness to escape himself, and at last succeeded.

The new settlers showed a measureless cunning and industry in reclaiming worthless soil; and so eager were they for land at last, that the Cistercians were even said to desecrate churchyards, and to encroach on the borders of royal forests.

Philip was a mere politician, who employed the cunning of a statesman, and the revenues of a prince, in the corruption of a number of fallen and effeminate republics.

not one of them is free from the entanglements of past things; when we look for the wisdom of statesmen we find the cunning of politicians; when open speech and plain reason might save the world, courts, bureaucrats, financiers and profiteers conspire.

"I hawdly think I could match his low cunning, don't yer understand.

Dorothea's casuistry might prove her ignorant of love and its perils, as a child is of fire; but having, as she deemed, discovered the limits of her duty and set up her terms with Raoul upon them, she soon developed a wonderful cunning in the art of being loved.

With that quiet smile and guileless manner he had undercut and outwitted the most cunning of Orientals.

There among the road-menders, going back and forth all day with a basket of crushed stone upon her head, toils a girl in whose hand God has hidden the cunning of the surgeon.

The thing now was to use all her cunning of mind, all her strength of body, to save him from imminent danger; and the satisfied glint of Hervey's eye convinced her that the danger was imminent indeed.

Of course, we have known well that killer whales continually skirt the edge of the floes and that they would undoubtedly snap up anyone who was unfortunate enough to fall into the water; but the facts that they could display such deliberate cunning, that they were able to break ice of such thickness (at least 2 1/2 feet), and that they could act in unison, were a revelation to us.

To this end she devoted herself with a truly Machiavellian ingenuity, devising all sorts of insults irritations and annoyances, and adding to the venom of her tongue the inventive cunning of a Malayan witch doctor.

[Illustration] The Shouaa Arabs are a very extraordinary race, and have scarcely any resemblance to the Arabs of the north; they have fine open countenances, with aquiline noses, and large eyes; their complexion is a light copper-colour; they possess great cunning with their courage, and resemble in appearance some of our best favoured gipsies in England, particularly the women; and their Arabic is nearly pure Egyptian.

And Cordelia with a heavy heart departed, for she knew the cunning of her sisters, and she wished her father in better hands than she was about to leave him in.

" "Nay, Little John," quoth Robin, "thou art a sound stout fellow, yet thou lackest the cunning that good Stutely hath, and I would not have harm befall thee for all Nottinghamshire.

Can one see a field of wheat gathered into sheaves without thinking of the dream of Joseph, or be around a farm at lambing time without smiling to recall the cunning of Jacob?

"Thy hand hath yet to learn its cunning," the master said, as in much confusion, one morning when they were quite alone, his pupil revealed his roughly executed head; "yet thou hast painted the soul!

Perhaps he was playing cunning; he may have imagined that the bird was invisible to me, and was trying to divert my attention from the spot.

The clause, sir, now before us contains, in my opinion, one of those visionary provisions, which, however infallible they may appear, will be easily defeated, and will have no other effect than to promote cunning and fraud, and to teach men those acts of collusion, with which they would otherwise never have been acquainted.

The strain of madness in his blood provided cunning that could mask itself beneath a princely bluster of indifference to consequences.

"I can, at this moment, see the arch and roguish manner with which that wayward boy, who then had but eight years, over-reached the cunning of the mimic Neptune, and retaliated for his devices, by turning the laugh of all on board on his own head!" "Was he but eight?" demanded a deep voice at her elbow.

The whole affair, even on that supposition, was childish enough, but I referred the exaggerated cunning to Handy Solomon, and considered it quite adequately explained.

About this time it occurred to him also that there was an old accomplishment of his which he would be in danger of losing for want of practice, if he did not take some opportunity to try his hand and regain its cunning, if it had begun to be diminished by disuse.