"Skim" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Castanier could travel in a few moments over the fertile plains of India, could soar on the wings of demons above African desert spaces, or skim the surface of the seas. The same insight that could read the inmost thoughts of others, could apprehend at a glance the nature of any material object, just as he caught as it were all flavors at once upon his ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... bread slack. Set that plate up higher! And for goodness' sake do clear this truck Away! Frogs' legs and marbles on my moulding-board! What next I wonder? John Henry, wash your face; And do get out from under foot, "Afford more Cream?" Used all you had? If that's the case, Skim all the pans. Do step a little spryer! I wish I hadn't asked so many folks To spend Thanksgiving. Good gracious! poke the fire And put some water on. Lord, how it smokes! I never was so tired in all my life! And there's the cake to frost, and dough ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... wood, or leafy vale, The trav'ller rests, haul'd up the skiff, Then lovers breathe their am'rous tale. When Nature, languid, seems to rest, Nor moves a leaf, or heaves a wave, And Zephyrs sleep, by Sol caress'd, And sportive swallows skim the lave; Then, when by early toil oppress'd, The peasant seeks the glen or dale, Enjoys his frugal meal and rest, Then lovers breathe their am'rous tale. When close beneath the forest's pride The upland's group of cattle throng, And sultry heat dissevers wide ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... the swifter Wan-Water, were once more chilled and stiffened to ice, which every day grew thicker and stronger. And now, there being no coverlet of snow upon it, the boys came out in troops, in their iron-shod shoes and their clumsy skates, to skim along those floors of delight that the winter had laid for them. To the fishes the ice was a warm blanket cast over them to keep them from the frost. But they must have been dismayed at the dim rush of so many huge forms above them, ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... so long, and it is so very late, that you will forgive me if I only skim over the gazette part of my letter—my next shall be more in my ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... words of my lessons slipping off, not one by one, or line by line, but by the entire page; I tried to lay hold of them; but they seemed, if I may so express it, to have put skates on, and to skim away from me with a smoothness ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... swallows, skim the main, And bear my spirit back again Over the earth, and through the air, A ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... she, 'to live amidst the coral bowers and crystal caverns of the ocean, with my sister nymphs, and listen to the sounding waters above, and to the soft shells of the tritons! and then, after sun-set, to skim on the surface of the waves round wild rocks and along sequestered shores, where, perhaps, some pensive wanderer comes to weep! Then would I soothe his sorrows with my sweet music, and offer him from a shell some of the delicious fruit that ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... he. "She will skim like a bird over the snow; so get into the sleigh, and we will go straight off to ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... truth, I rather take it thou hast got By instinct wise much sense about thy lot, And hast small care Whether an Eden or a desert be Thy home, so thou remain'st alive, and free To skim the air. ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... little excursion from Gurgan Point to the harbour; the sea was luckily calm, but there was sufficient breeze to enable The Kittiwake to skim over the water like her sea-gull namesake. The girls, who by this time had grasped the depths of their friend's plot, enjoyed the situation immensely. They were actually having their coveted sail in ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... shadowy tribes;— And as the swallows crowd the bulrush-beds Of some clear river, issuing from a lake, On autumn-days, before they cross the sea; And to each bulrush-crest a swallow hangs Quivering, and others skim the river-streams, And their quick twittering fills the banks and shores— So around Hermod swarm'd the twittering ghosts. Women, and infants, and young men who died Too soon for fame, with white ungraven shields; And old men, known to ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... twenty-mile trip across to Catalina Island, and on the way over they saw a whole "school" of whales and a flight of flying-fishes. Yes, really and truly, these little fish fly or sail through the air, for their fins balance them like a parachute. They skim along ten or twelve feet above the waves, and then drop in the water to rest, taking another flight whenever their ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton
... silver it crosses the city; The lamps in the streets are streamed with rain; And sparrows complain beneath deep eaves, And among whirled leaves The sea-gulls, blowing from tower to lower tower, From wall to remoter wall, Skim with the driven rain to the rising sea-sound And close grey wings and fall ...
— The House of Dust - A Symphony • Conrad Aiken
... worked at hardest, and finished, but with less deliberation. He grew more and more careless toward the books he counted of little consequence, while he imagined himself growing more and more capable of getting at the heart of a book by skimming its pages. If to skim be ever a true faculty, it must come of long experience in the art of reading, and is not possible to a beginner. To skim and judge, is to wake from a doze and give the charge ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald
... gold? Ingot or coin? There is wealth untold In the ancient convent of Englemehr; That is not so very far from here. The Abbot, esteem'd a holy man, Will hold what he has and grasp what he can; The cream of the soil he loves to skim, Why not levy ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... was then in full vogue, though soon to be weeded out even in its parent England, and the law to be made a trial of facts instead of traverses, demurrers, avoidances, rebutters and surrebutters, churned out of the skim milk of words. Clayton's pleadings require a bold, dull mind to read them now, but he tired his adversaries out, and his cousin, Chief-Justice Clayton, who was jealous of him, had yet to decide in ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... her own house was as delightful as she could have wished. The day was fine and bright; the first skim of snow had fallen on Christmas Eve and made the world beautiful; the harbor was still ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... time for the early boat to the capital. It was sent in large baskets made of rushes, and packed in many layers of cool, fresh leaves; so that it arrived at Buenos Ayres, forty hours after leaving Mount Pleasant, perfectly fresh and good. The skim milk was given to the pigs, who had already increased to quite ...
— On the Pampas • G. A. Henty
... grains of wheat; of sapphire, emerald and jasper stones, each one dram; of hazel-nuts, two drams; of pellitory of Spain, shavings of ivory, calamus odoratus, each the quantity of twenty-nine grains of wheat; of honey or sugar a sufficient quantity. Boil down and skim off." ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... bureaucrat, and other bulwarks of our united Empire. For the rest, you will want to cram into ten short days the average experiences of ten long weeks. If, like most of us, you are young and foolish, you will skim the bubbling froth of life and seek crowded diversion in the lighter follies, the passing shows, and l'amour qui rit. And you will probably return to the big things of war tired but mightily refreshed, and almost ready to welcome a further ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... forests, making the face of nature smile, draining marshes, cultivating wheat, and converting it into flour; they yearly skim from the surface of the sea riches equally necessary. Thus, had I leisure and abilities to lead you through this continent, I could show you an astonishing prospect very little known in Europe; one diffusive scene of happiness reaching from ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... hen. "You should see her now that she has eaten the porridge: she is much taller than her mother, and her legs are so long that she can skim over ...
— Little Folks (December 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... Naturally, we both looked up to ascertain the reason for this sudden departure, when we were startled to see a tall, bearded man with a long staff in his hands, skimming down the snow-covered slope of the mountain towards us. One glance showed us that it was our friend, the hermit, though how he could skim over the snow like that without moving his feet was a puzzle to us, until, on approaching to within twenty yards of where we sat, he stuck his staff into the snow and checked his speed, when we perceived that he was ...
— The Boys of Crawford's Basin - The Story of a Mountain Ranch in the Early Days of Colorado • Sidford F. Hamp
... still they press bravely on. The clank of machinery makes the hills rumble, the hiss of steam and the sighs of the soldering-furnaces are like the complaint of some giant overgorging himself. The river swarms with the fleets of fish-boats, which skim outward with the dawn to flit homeward again at twilight and settle like a vast brood of white-winged gulls. Men let the hours go by unheeded, and forget ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... exactly opposite the grand stand, full half a mile away—the moment that I remembered from year to year as one of exquisite illusion—for then the horses seemed to lift from the earth as with wings, and to skim over the track like a covey of low-flying birds. The finish was tame to this. Mrs. March and I had our wonted difference of opinion as to which horse had won, and we were rather uncommonly controversial because we had both decided upon the same horse, as we found, only she was ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Pen. I say "unprintable"; and in justice I must also say "unthinkable." They were unthinkable to me until I saw them, and I was no spring chicken in the ways of the world and the awful abysses of human degradation. It would take a deep plummet to reach bottom in the Erie County Pen, and I do but skim lightly and facetiously the surface of things as ...
— The Road • Jack London
... motor would have to cool down before he could work on it, plenty of time to skim through the newspaper. With the chronic worry of the unemployed, he snapped it open at the want-ads and ran his eye down the Help Wanted—Robot column. There was nothing for him under the Specialist heading, even the Unskilled Labor ...
— The Velvet Glove • Harry Harrison
... fence into Miss Morgan's garden, he heard the pursuers half a block away. He saw, a hundred feet distant, a bevy of girls standing on the sidewalk. And he saw, too, as he came skipping down the lot, something that made him fairly skim over the earth; his Heart's Desire, standing alone, near the porch, in his path, under an apple-tree. The exhilaration of the chase had made him forget his trouble. He was so surefooted in the race that he forgot to be abashed for the moment and came bounding ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White
... him?" Racey allowed his eyes casually to skim the expressionless faces of the men backed ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... sea tern fleck and skim The morning's rim; Or the dark thrushes clear Their flutes of music leisurely and sheer, Then ...
— Behind the Arras - A Book of the Unseen • Bliss Carman
... After perhaps an hour of this, he had wearied and sought to save himself by abandoning the lynx's territory, so had struck across the open lake. But here the snow was too soft to bear him at all, and the lynx could still skim over. So it proved a fatal error. He was strong and brave. He fought at least another hour here before the much stronger, heavier lynx had done him to death. There was no justification. It was a clear case of tyrannical murder, but in this case vengeance ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... they shadow with their solemn forms, their costly fronts rich with the spoils of kingdoms, and softened with the magic of the midnight beam. The whole city too is poured forth for festival. The people lounge on the quays and cluster on the bridges; the light barks skim along in crowds, just touching the surface of the water, while their bright prows of polished iron gleam in the moonshine, and glitter in the rippling wave. Not a sound that is not graceful: the tinkle of guitars, the ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... his greatest pleasure to take auntie, Aileen, and old Jenny out to skim the lake in this gondola, and sit for long happy hours ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... dark clouds began to scud across the sky overhead, and the low mutterings of thunder came from the distance. It may have been the thunderings of nature, or of war—she did not heed them; her heart was filled with bitter, rebellious thoughts, and her flying feet seemed to skim over the road; nor did she check her hasty steps until she was about to enter her father's room. Mauer sat in his arm-chair, absorbed in thought. She threw herself down on her knees beside him, and flung her arms about his waist. Pressing her head against his breast, she said half ...
— Sister Carmen • M. Corvus
... vinegar; old friends may forget or forsake us; but the old book is ever the same. What would the old man do without it? And to you who are young I would say—you may re-read, you first must read. Choose worthy books to love. As for those who know no book long enough either to love or despise it—who skim through good and bad alike and forget page ninety-nine while reading page 100, we may simply say to them, in the words of the witty Frenchman, "What a sad old age you are preparing ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... When brown, cut the meat in pieces, add this with all the juice it has drawn, to the chicken soup. Set on the back of the stove, and cook slowly all day. Set in a cold place, or on ice over night, and next morning after it is congealed, skim off ...
— The International Jewish Cook Book • Florence Kreisler Greenbaum
... it is delightful to escape into the cloisters, flooded with sunlight, where the swallows skim, and the brown hawks circle, and the mason bees are at work upon their cells among the carvings. The arcades of the two cloisters are the final triumph of Lombard terra-cotta. The memory fails before such infinite invention, such facility ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... enough in their degree, were to the signboard, when the signboard at last came, as skim milk is to hot brandy. It was the signboard that, more startlingly than anything else, marked the dawn of a new era in St. Luke's Square. Four men spent a day and a half in fixing it; they had ladders, ropes, and pulleys, and two of them dined on the flat lead ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... Oceanic Miscellany are the Reverend Dr. S—-h and his accomplished lady, the distinguished financier, Mr. B—-n,—and so through the whole list of characters;—I say, for a man who writes the pages you skim over, it is a mighty different piece of business. Why, if I do tell all I know about some things that have come to my cognizance, I shall make you open your eyes and spread your pupils, as if you had been to the Eye Infirmary, and the doctors there had anointed your lids with the extract ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... the perfect milk substitute— | | | | PRATTS CALF MEAL | | "BABY FOOD FOR BABY CALVES" | | | |When prepared and fed in accordance with the simple directions, Pratts| |Calf Meal will grow calves equal to those grown on whole or skim-milk| |and at less cost. | | | |This truly wonderful calf feed has practically the same chemical | |composition as the solids of whole milk. It is made of superior | |materials, carefully selected and especially adapted to calf feeding. | |These are milled separately and ...
— Pratt's Practical Pointers on the Care of Livestock and Poultry • Pratt Food Co.
... awoke the pony to desperate endeavor. She seemed to merely skim the dry grass of the open plateau, and in ten minutes Helen saw a riderless mount plunging up the side of ...
— The Girl from Sunset Ranch - Alone in a Great City • Amy Bell Marlowe
... but was really intended to catch butterflies. He came up to the pond, and she imagined he was going to fish; but no, he only unfastened his knapsack and took some small phials and a tin box out of it Then, bending down to the edge of the water, he began to skim its surface cautiously with a ladle and empty the contents into one of his phials. Suddenly a look of delight came into his face, and ...
— 'That Very Mab' • May Kendall and Andrew Lang
... sparkling sea, is excessively difficult to navigate; its surf looks no more than champagne foam, but a thousand quicksands and shoals lie beneath: there are breakers ahead for more than half the dainty pleasure-boats that skim their hour upon it; and the foundered lie by millions, forgotten, five fathoms deep below. The only safe ballast upon it is gold dust; and if stress of weather come on you, it will swallow you without remorse. Trevenna had none of this ballast; he had come out to sea in as ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... now is a little work in de garden. Dey say I is too ole ter work, so charity gives me a little ter go upon every week. For one weeks 'lowance o' sumptin' ter eat dey gives me, hold on, I will show you, dat beats guessin'. Here it is: 1/2 peck meal (corn meal), 2 lbs oat meal, 2 lb dry skim milk, and 1 lb plate meat. Dis is what I gits fer one week 'lowance. I can't work much, but de white folks gib me meals fur washin' de woodwork in dere houses, de white folks in Hayes's Bottom. What little I do, I does fer him. He ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States • Various
... Put the butter in a frying-pan, add the onion, and stir until a nice brown. Put the stock on to boil. Skim the onions out of the butter and add them to the stock. Stir 1 tbsp. of flour into the remaining butter, thin with a little of the stock, put all together, and simmer for 20 minutes. Add salt and pepper, and it ...
— Public School Domestic Science • Mrs. J. Hoodless
... boil three or four hours very slowly; it should be put in cold water, and be kept covered during the whole process; a small ham will boil in two hours. All bacon requires much the same management,—and if you boil cabbage or greens with it, skim all the grease off the pot before you put them in. Ham or dried beef, if very salt, should be soaked several hours before cooking, and should be boiled ...
— Domestic Cookery, Useful Receipts, and Hints to Young Housekeepers • Elizabeth E. Lea
... doomed my bird, for ever, Fra all thy feather'd mates to sever; Were I not near thee to deliver Wi' my awn hand; Nor ever more thou'd skim the river, Or ...
— Revised Edition of Poems • William Wright
... the sea-side and lying much open, the wind drove in the rain forcibly, so that the water came over my bed, and ran about the room, that I was fain to skim it up with a platter. And when my clothes were wet, I had no fire to dry them; so that my body was benumbed with cold, and my fingers swelled, that one was grown as big as two. Though I was at some charge in this room also, yet I could not keep out the wind and rain.... Afterwards I ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... the indisputable blessings, generally imprisoned in pots and stewpans, are almost always inaccessible; to know how to look at them with laboriously-acquired indifference and to practise to take no notice of them, saying to yourself that here are objects which are probably sacred, since merely to skim them with the tip of a respectful tongue is enough to let loose the unanimous anger of all ...
— Our Friend the Dog • Maurice Maeterlinck
... her all the time—no childer, dear, don't be thinkin' of it, and Pearlie, I think ye'd better not be puttin' notions inter their heads. Yer father wouldn't like it. Well Danny, me man, how goes it?" went on Mrs. Watson, as her latest born was eating his rather scanty supper. "It's not skim milk and dhry bread ye'd be havin', if you were her child this night, but taffy candy filled wid nuts and chunks o' cake as big as yer head." Whereupon Danny wailed dismally, and had to be taken from his chair and have ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... river and close by the lake We skim like the swallow and cut though the brake; Over the mountain and round by the lea, Though the black tunnel and down to the sea. Clatter and bang by the wild riven shore, We mingle our shriek with the ocean's roar. We strain and we struggle, we rush and we fly— We're a terrible ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... plains of the Ohio and the Mississippi, we saw crawling beneath us from west, south and north, an endless succession of railway trains bearing their multitudes on to Washington. With marvellous speed we rushed westward, rising high to skim over the snow-topped peaks of the Rocky Mountains and then the glittering rim of the Pacific was before us. Half way between the American coast and Hawaii we met the fleets coming from China and Japan. Side ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putman Serviss
... to skim the earth, to soar above the clouds, to bathe in the Elysian dew of the rainbow, and to inhale the balmy smells of nard and cassia, which the musky winds of the zephyr scatter through the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... ordinary, sensible, telling-the-news, but there was always one little sentence in his which seemed to say more than the words, and to tell me that he cared a great deal. If a stranger had read it, he would not have understood, but I knew what he meant, and I used to skim over the pages until I came to those few words, and they were ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... large six-penny loaf before she felt at all stayed or satisfied. She says she did get light, but it was all in her body and none in her mind-and this lightness of body lasted a long time. Oh! she was so light, and felt so well, she could 'skim ...
— The Narrative of Sojourner Truth • Sojourner Truth
... church so lone, the log-built one, That echoed to many a parting groan And natural prayer Of dying foemen mingled there— Foemen at morn, but friends at eve— Fame or country least their care: (What like a bullet can undeceive!) But now they lie low, While over them the swallows skim, And all is hushed ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... bats and goat-suckers dart from their lonely retreat and skim along the trees on the river's bank. The different kinds of frogs almost stun the ear with their hoarse and hollow-sounding croaking, while the owls and goat-suckers lament and mourn all ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... man is on the boil; enough, enough, he is boiling over; remove some of the embers from under him and skim ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... jury trying Cleveland, no want of food or fire should induce him to endorse any such recommendation in regard to that intolerable book. It is, to speak frankly, one of the very few books—one of the still fewer novels—which I have found it practically impossible to read even in the "skim and skip and dip" fashion which should, no doubt, be only practised as a work of necessity (i.e. duty to others) and of mercy (to oneself) on extraordinary occasions, but which nobody but a prig and a pedant will absolutely disallow. Almost the only good thing I can find ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... this hill-top, how the blazing Sound Is marked by moving shadows of the clouds That skim ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... the drawbridge flies, Just as it trembled on the rise; Not lighter does the swallow skim Along the smooth lake's level brim; And when Lord Marmion reached his band, He halts, and turns with clenched hand, And shout of loud defiance pours, And shook his ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... nourish him, his body wasted. They bought a cow for his sole use and benefit, and guarded it like a sacred animal but to no purpose. He drank of its milk and grew thinner than ever. Strange furrows began to appear on his tiny face, with shadows and a transparent tinge like the blue of skim-milk. As the pure air of Drayton did so little for him, Mrs. Nevill Tyson wondered how he would ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... pound beef, one pound salt pork, and one pound mutton; cut into pieces about three inches by two, let it boil, and skim. Take two or three carrots, one large turnip, one large head of celery, three or four leeks, a good green cabbage, cut in four, the other vegetables cut into pieces of moderate size, not too small; put them in with the meat, and see that they are first covered by the water. Let it boil for ...
— The Belgian Cookbook • various various
... answered, and not as much as by a tremor of the eye-lid did either show how delighted she would have been to sit beside the handsome young man and skim along the road to ...
— Polly's Business Venture • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... momentary rattling of the seared beech-leaves, the whole forest seemed shivering in the dead chill that was settling over the earth. The cold, indeed, was now becoming so intense as to congeal and skim over all the pools and still eddies of the river, and make solid ice along the shores of the rapid currents of the stream; while even the ground was fast becoming so frozen as to clumper and sound beneath the hurrying tread of ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... easily offered; hard to stand by. It is a prayer often answered in ways that drive us almost to despair. It means, 'Do anything with me, put me into any seven-fold heated furnace of sorrow, do anything that will melt my hardness, and run off my dross, which Thy great ladle will then skim away, that the surface may be clear, and the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... likely to favor the beginner. But it doesn't pay to flout the devil, in the long run. For a man like the Rector, fishing was the only certain trade, but in his own boat, with nothing lost to outfitters, who sit quietly at home and skim the cream ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... harness—was a Godsend, after the past three days. Cicero, Frank's ancient and black Man Friday, dispensed hot coffee and huge hunks of bread and ham; and a violin and two good voices among the Crescents made the time skim along far faster than ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... fresher than at other times; the sun bright and as yellow as gold, the wind lusty and strong, before which the great white clouds go sailing majestically across the bright blueness of the sky above, while their dusky shadows skim across the brown face ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle
... seldom seen in calm weather, but appear to follow the gale, and when it blows most heavily they are seen in greatest numbers. The colour is brown and white; the size about that of the swallow, whose motions oh the wing they resemble. They skim over the surface of the roughest sea, gliding up and down the undulations with astonishing swiftness. When they observe their prey, they descend flutteringly, and place the feet and the tips of the wings ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... over the creamy-white bed-quilt, in the glow of the subdued night-lamp, in his picture of "Asleep," and we all thought what a fine thing it was. But we have not thought it so fine for the whole art world to burst into the subsequent imitative paroxysm of crashing discords in chalk, lip-salve, and skim-milk, which has lasted ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... be worthy of anything, he is worth bottoming. It may be all very well to skim milk, for the cream lies on the top; but who could skim Lord Byron? ...
— The Guide to Reading - The Pocket University Volume XXIII • Edited by Dr. Lyman Abbott, Asa Don Dickenson, and Others
... looking round her, not able to identify the landscape because she was still confused a little, and then walked softly on, all the time afraid lest she should awake and lose the sweetness of it all, and the sense of rest and happiness. She felt so light, so airy, as if she could skim across the field like any child. It was bliss enough to breathe and move, with every organ so free. After more than fifty years of hard service in the world, to feel like this, even in a dream! ...
— A Little Pilgrim - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... I can get on their trail?" thought Larry, as he watched the houses skim by, and held himself in his seat, beside Grace, to avoid the jouncing and swaying caused by ...
— Larry Dexter's Great Search - or, The Hunt for the Missing Millionaire • Howard R. Garis
... do with it as they do with foul clay—thrust it into the fire and that will burn all the blackness out of it. Get the love of God into your hearts, and the fire of His Divine Spirit into your spirits to melt you down, as it were, and then the scum and the dross will come to the top, and you can skim them off. Two powers conquer my sin: the one is the blood of Jesus Christ, which washes me from all the guilt of the past; the other is the fiery influence of that Divine Spirit which makes me pure and clean for ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... make it even tolerable. Even in later days Frank T. Bullen was able to write: "I have often seen the men break up a couple of biscuits into a pot of coffee for their breakfast, and after letting it stand a minute or two, skim off the accumulated scum of vermin from the top—maggots, weevils, etc—to the extent of a couple of tablespoonsful, before they could shovel the mess into ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... The remains of Bacon's speech breathe all the spirit of the Long Parliament. "The gentlemen," said he, "must sell their plate, and the farmers their brass pots, ere this will be paid; and for us, we are here to search the wounds of the realm, and not to skim them over. The dangers are these. First, we shall breed discontent and endanger her Majesty's safety, which must consist more in the love of the people than their wealth. Secondly, this being granted in this sort, other princes hereafter ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... toiling hand of Care; The panting herds repose: Yet hark, how thro' the peopled air The busy murmur glows! The insect youth are on the wing, Eager to taste the honied spring And float amid the liquid noon: Some lightly o'er the current skim, Some show their gaily-gilded trim Quick-glancing ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... of the tanks. But after the liquid is drawn off you can see them. When first melted the sugar is far from pure; you would be astonished at the amount of dirt mixed with it. Many of these impurities boil up to the surface and over and over again we skim them off. But even after that we have to wash the sugar by various processes. After it has been separated, clarified, and filtered it comes out a clear white liquid, and is ready for the vacuum pans, where the water is evaporated and the ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... capture for their lawful owners. Meanwhile, I dashed forward whithersoever the horse took me. I remember, even amid my panic, what a delight it was to sit astride of so noble a beast, who seemed to scorn my weight, and skim the earth as lightly as if he carried a child. Had it been my own sorry nag I should long since have ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... must be eliminated and converted into beef, 10 per cent. of the milch cows to be thus disposed, of. Then swine, in particular, must be slaughtered down to 65 per cent. of the present number, they being great consumers of material suitable for human food. In Germany much skim milk and buttermilk is fed to swine; the authors demand that this partial waste of very valuable albumens be stopped. The potato crop—of which Germany produces above 50,000,000 tons a year, or much more than any other land—must be more extensively drawn upon than ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... certain qualifications of course. A first-rate city house is a regular sanatorium. The only trouble is, that the little good-for-nothings that come of utterly used-up and worn-out stock, and ought to die, can't die, to save their lives. So they grow up to dilute the vigor of the race with skim-milk vitality. They would have died, like good children, in most average country places; but eight months of shelter in a regulated temperature, in a well-sunned house, in a duly moistened air, ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... milk they press and squeeze, And so they make it into cheese; The cream they skim and shake in churns, And then it ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... back the thick setling that lieth in the bottom of the vessel that it is cooled in; when it is all put together cover it with a cloth and let it work very near three days, then when you mean to put it up, skim off all the barm clean, and put it up into a vessel, but you must not stop the vessel very close in three or four days, but let it have some vent to work; when it is close stopped you must look often to it, and have a peg on the top to give it vent, when you heare it make a noise as it ...
— The accomplisht cook - or, The art & mystery of cookery • Robert May
... months from that date, after sending sundry presents on his part to the family, of smeaked hams and salt tongues—acknowledged on theirs, by return of carrier, in the shape of sucking pigs, jargonelle pears, skim-milk cheeses, and such like—matters were soldered; and Miss Jeanie Learig, made into Mrs Whitteraick by the blessing of Dr Blether, rode away into Edinburgh in a post-chaise, with a brown and a black horse, one blind and the other lame, seated cheek-by-jowl with her loving spouse, who, doubtless ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... all pleasant associations and quiet nobleness, decorated by the love of nature and letters, intimacies with poets, and with that especial touch of nature which always went to the heart of the Complete Angler, a love of fishing—for Vaughan was wont, at times, to skim the waters of ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... himself up as the guide of coming generations of tourists. There had been a full pour of forenoon sunshine on the white dust of the street before our hotel, but the cold of the early morning, though it had not been too much for the birds that sang in the garden back of us, had left a skim of ice in damp spots, and now, in the late gray of the afternoon, the ice was visible and palpable underfoot in the Colosseum, where crowds of people wandered severally or collectively about in the half-frozen mud. They were, indeed, all over the place, up and down, ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... cups cornmeal 2 cups sweet milk (whole or skim) 4 teaspoons baking powder 2 tablespoons corn syrup 2 tablespoons fat 1 teaspoon ...
— Foods That Will Win The War And How To Cook Them (1918) • C. Houston Goudiss and Alberta M. Goudiss
... plunged into the stream of school-education, but, by floating on the surface, imbibed a small tincture of those different sciences which his master pretended to teach. In short, he resembled those vagrant swallows that skim along the level of some pool or river, without venturing to wet one feather in their wings, except in the accidental pursuit of an inconsiderable fly. Yet, though his capacity or inclination was unsuited for studies of this kind, he did not fail to manifest a perfect genius in the acquisition ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... of paste to carry with them; and when they need food they put this in water, and beat it up till it dissolves, and then drink it. [It is prepared in this way; they boil the milk, and when the rich part floats on the top they skim it into another vessel, and of that they make butter; for the milk will not become solid till this is removed. Then they put the milk in the sun to dry. And when they go on an expedition, every man takes some ten pounds of this dried milk with him. And of a morning he will take a half pound ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... the fact. When a storm is coming, Virgil also makes his swallows skim low about the lake, which ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... at a time. For the snipe, I found them very unexpectedly, I tell you, in a bit of marshy meadow just at the outlet of the pond. Garry was paddling me along at the top of his pace, after a wing-tipped wood-duck, when up jumped one of the long-billed rascals, and had the impudence to skim across the creek under my very nose—'skeap! skeap!' Well, I dropped him, you may be sure, with a charge, too, of duck shot; and he fell some ten yards over on the meadow; so leaving Garry to pursue the drake, I landed, loaded my gun with No. 9, and went to work—the result as you see; but I cleared ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... easy task. Three times they swooped low, to skim along just over the crest of the waves, ...
— Curlie Carson Listens In • Roy J. Snell
... knows it simply as the Scooter. The first scooters were only forty feet long, the next were fifty-five, the last were seventy. Everything about them is made as light as possible; so that they can skim along in about two feet of water at an outside speed of nearly fifty (land) miles an hour. They are really the thinnest of racing shells fitted with the strongest of lightweight engines. They are all armed with depth charges, which are bombs ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... a large vessel till the scum rises. Skim this off as fast as it appears on the surface, until the butter remains quite clear, like oil. It should then be carefully poured off, that the impurities which settle at the bottom of the vessel may be separated. The clarified butter is to be put aside to be kept, the settlings must be used ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... bees, and put them in. Get some honey; if candied, heat it till it dissolves; comb honey is not so good without mashing; if no honey is to be had, brown sugar may be taken instead; add a little water, and boil it till about the consistence of honey, and skim it; when cool enough, pour a quantity among the combs, directly on the bees; cover the bottom of the hive with a cloth, securing it firmly, and bring to the fire to warm up. In two or three hours they will be ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby
... rally With dance and song the woods resound; The hatchet's buried in the valley; No foe profanes our hunting-ground! The green leaves on the blithe boughs quiver, The verdant hills with song-birds ring, While our bark canoes, the river Skim, like swallows on the wing.—G. ...
— The Riflemen of the Miami • Edward S. Ellis
... forth in unfathomable words, of which we can but skim the surface. They mean more than that such little ones are so closely identified with Him that, in His love, He reckons good done to them as done to Him. That is most blessedly true. Nor is it true only because ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... the upholsterer, to whom Guy telegraphed in hot haste, bidding him hunt New York over for the desired shade. Where he found it I never knew, but find it he did, or something approximating to it, a faded, washed-out color, which seemed a cross between wood-ashes and pale skim milk. A sample was sent up for Guy's approval, and then the work commenced again, when order number three came in one of those dainty little billets which used to make Guy's face radiant with happiness. Daisy had changed her mind again and gone back to the blue, ...
— Miss McDonald • Mary J. Holmes
... following of such a precept that, through careful devices and manipulating cleverness, a brilliant success, though transitory is achieved by some writers who range lightly over surfaces, their thoughts dipping no deeper than a flat stone thrown to skim along the water, which it keeps ruffling, making a momentary sprightly splash at each contact, until, its force being soon spent, it disappears and ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... into a large pot, and add half a table-spoonful of salt. Hang it over a good fire, as early as six o'clock in the morning, if you dine at two. When it has come to a hard boil, and the scum has risen, (which it will do as soon as it has boiled,) skim it well. Do not remove the lid more frequently than is absolutely necessary, as uncovering the pot causes the flavour to evaporate. Then set it on hot coals in the corner, and keep it simmering steadily, adding fresh coals so as to continue ...
— Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches • Eliza Leslie
... States, where it is very abundant; it is frequent in the Middle States, and only occasionally seen in New England. The wings are exceedingly long; they fly in close flocks, moving simultaneously. They seem to feed as they skim low over the water, the under-mandible grazing or cutting the surface, and thus taking in their food.—Vide Coues's Key to North American ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 2 • Samuel de Champlain
... and water into the kettle," he explained, "and they boil, and the steam comes out and drops into this cold tin and condenses. Then, when we have enough, we boil that up and condense again. Then we skim the oil that rises to the top, and that is attar of roses. It ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... that strain, on the track, neck and neck, on the home-stretch, With nostrils distended, and mane froth-flecked, and the neck and the shoulders, Each urged to his best by the cry and the whip and the rein of his rider, Now they skim o'er the waters and fly, side by side, neck and neck, through the meadows. The blue heron flaps from the reeds, and away wings her course up the river; Straight and swift is her flight o'er the meads, but she hardly outstrips the canoemen. See! the voyageurs bend to their oars ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... sliprails and lets the top rail down: the lower rail fits rather tightly and some exertion is required to free it, so he makes the animals jump that one. Then he "poddies"-hand-feeds—the calves which have been weaned too early. He carries the skim-milk to the yard in a bucket made out of an oil-drum—sometimes a kerosene-tin—seizes a calf by the nape of the neck with his left hand, inserts the dirty forefinger of his right into its mouth, and shoves its head down into the milk. The calf sucks, thinking it has a teat, and pretty ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... startling the girls and delighting Dwight. They will follow a steamer much as a fly does a horse, always keeping at just about such a distance, though one would think, in their sky-circling and ocean-dipping, they must lose time occasionally. As these birds of the sea glide down a billow, then skim lightly up again, it would seem they must sometimes be caught in the swirl of foam and borne under, but no! Every time, no matter with what fusilade of spray the wave breaks, Mr. Seagull rises, lightly triumphant, ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... is closing in and the gas is lighted, but is not yet fully effective, for it is not quite dark. Mr. Snagsby standing at his shop-door looking up at the clouds sees a crow who is out late skim westward over the slice of sky belonging to Cook's Court. The crow flies straight across Chancery Lane and Lincoln's Inn Garden into ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... you come to a river deep and wide, And you've no canoe to skim it; If your duty's on the other side, Jump in, my ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... of boats. The peasants skate to market, the workmen to their work, the small tradespeople to their business; entire families skate from the country to the town with their bags and baskets on their shoulders or drive in sledges. Skating to them is as habitual and easy as walking, and they skim along so rapidly that one can scarcely follow them with the eye. In past years bets were commonly made between the best Dutch skaters that they would skate down the canals on either side of the railway as fast as the train could go; ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... has lovely things to eat, and Mrs. Fogg won't even let her drink skim milk; but I always feel that taking a present lets the person know you've been thinking about them and are extra glad to see them. Besides, unless we have company soon, those tarts will have to be eaten by the ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... no longer see you skim away into the far vista of these alleys, or shrink back into the shadows ...
— The Gay Lord Quex - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur W. Pinero
... that Messala had attained his utmost speed, the effort was with effect; slowly but certainly he was beginning to forge ahead. His horses were running with their heads low down; from the balcony their bodies appeared actually to skim the earth; their nostrils showed blood red in expansion; their eyes seemed straining in their sockets. Certainly the good steeds were doing their best! How long could they keep the pace? It was but the commencement of the sixth round. On they dashed. As they neared ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... set you on your feet, I'll go and take a skim over the surface. Remember, the more you practise, and the faster you throw away fear, the sooner you will be able to do ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... "We hear, Mrs. Skim; and quite agree with you that he knows very little about us and our affairs," answered one of the swallows with a shrill chirp, like a scornful laugh. "We work harder than he does any day. Did he build his own house, I should like to ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... prone in Dantesque confusion. There are rock-doves and falcons fluttering about the sunny precipices; cliff-swallows build precarious habitations against the roof of yawning caverns; sandpipers and wagtails skim over the streamlet that glides in a smiling flood across reaches of yellow sand. The charm of water in the waste! This Seldja-brook is a true child of the sun; cold in the morning and evening hours, its restless little ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... may have to swim — He hasn't a hope to clear it — Unless he skims like the swallows skim At full speed over, but not for him! He'll never go next or ...
— Rio Grande's Last Race and Other Verses • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... the next world?" cried the old hag in her drunkenness: "no, in this world, here, on what we call earth. What words the fools make use of! There is no next world, you silly ninnyhammer! he who does not skim off the fat from the broth while he is here, is a wretched gull. This however is what they clack to their simple brood, that they may behave prettily, and keep within bounds, and go the way one would lead ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... water, gliding along the huge plates of zinc, and flowing over the edges of the vast superposed basins. Then frosty weather seemed to turn these roofs into rigid ice, like the Norwegian bays over which skaters skim; while the warm June nights lulled them into deep sleep. One December night, on opening his window, he had seen them white with snow, so lustrously white that they lighted up the coppery sky. Unsullied by a single footstep, they then stretched out like the lonely plains of the Far ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... darting forward to the ocean flings. Through misty air as nearer earth he drew, Cutting the winds and whirling sands, he flew 320 Like birds, that hov'ring o'er the fishy main, Drop from the sky', and skim the watry plain. So from the height his mighty grandsire props, Down on the pinion light Cyllenius drops; And scarce his winged feet had touch'd the ground, 325 AEneas with the busy crew he found, Planning new structures ...
— The Fourth Book of Virgil's Aeneid and the Ninth Book of Voltaire's Henriad • Virgil and Voltaire
... the seat mentioned, and her twin brother began to hoist the mainsail of the Ice Bird. It ran up easily, and caught by the wind the craft began to skim over the surface of the lake like ...
— The Bobbsey Twins - Or, Merry Days Indoors and Out • Laura Lee Hope
... Skim-milk and water, with a bit of glue in it, heated scalding hot, is excellent to restore old, rusty, black Italian crape. If clapped and pulled dry, like nice muslin, it will look as well, or better, than ...
— The American Frugal Housewife • Lydia M. Child
... readily guessed in what thrilling night-work these canoe-men are engaged as they skim over Squaw Pond, with no swish of paddle, nor jar of motion, nor even a noisy breath, disturbing the brooding silence through which they glide. They are "jacking" or "floating" for deer, showing the radiant eye of their silvery jack to attract any antlered buck or graceful ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... the skulking Frenchman to come forth from his bights and bays; and what looms upon us yonder from the fog-bank in the east? a gallant frigate towing behind her the long low hull of a crippled privateer, which but three short days ago had left Dieppe to skim the sea, and whose crew of ferocious hearts are now cursing their imprudence in an English hold. Stirring times those, which I love to recall, for they were days of gallantry and enthusiasm, and were moreover the ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... which has already been separated. The upper part of the drum is fitted with an annular flange, about 11/2 in. from the top, reaching to within one-sixteenth of an inch of the periphery. After the separation of the skim milk from the cream, the former passes behind and above this flange through the aperture, B, and is removed by means of the tube, D, furnished with a steel tip projecting from the cover of the machine into ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 613, October 1, 1887 • Various
... a single iceberg is to be seen on this fantastic sea. Innumerable flocks of birds skim its surface, among them is a pelican which is shot. On a floating piece of ice is a bear of the Arctic species and of gigantic size. At last land is signalled. It is an island of a league in circumference, to which the name of Bennet Islet was given, in honour of the captain's ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne
... I hung fire," said Big Slim. "I had it in my mind to jump into the room, follow, and lay him out. But a better plan came to me. Why not skim down the scaffold, and get the lad as he left the ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... his eyebrows; and the natural expression of his face, bordering on the morose, was never lighted by more than a strained smile—a smile that suggested a grin, that puckered the corners of his eyes and drew hard furrows down his cheeks, but evidenced nothing akin to even the skim-milk of ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... by sleighs, a very pleasant mode of travelling when the roads are smooth, but rather fatiguing when they are uneven, as the sleigh then jumps from hill to hill, like an oyster-shell thrown by a boy to skim the surface of the water. To defend myself from the cold, I had put on, over my coat, and under my cloak, a wadded black silk dressing-gown; I thought nothing of it at the time, but I afterwards discovered that I was supposed to be one of the rebel priests ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... was the fertile brain, That bid him onward flee, The Indian moon was on the wane And drooped the hawthorne tree. The light canoe of rounded bark Scarce dared to skim the flood, For they had come with meaning dark To ravage lake ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... I may transfer my love of France to him," said Max Emmanuel. "But let us eschew politics, and enjoy the bliss of the hour. To-day la bella Venezia puts forth all her charms. And as the swift gondolas skim over the green waters of the lagoon, so flies my ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... man would rader dan put out his hand to work, Let women toil, an' sweat and moil—as wicked as de Turk. De cream ob eberyt'ing he wants, let oders hab de skim; In fact de wurld and all it holds was only made for him. ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... slight and rather tall, with a great deal of the Contessa's grace, moving lightly as if she scarcely touched the ground, but like a bird rather than a cat. There was nothing in her of the feline grace of which we hear so much. Her movements were all direct and rapid; her feet seemed to skim, not to tread, the ground with an airy poise, which even when she stood still implied movement, always light, untiring, full of energy and impulse. Her eyes were gray—if it is possible to call by the name of the dullest of tints those two globes of light, now ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... heat it to the boiling point. Add one cup of sugar for every two cups of juice; stir until the sugar is dissolved; boil briskly for five minutes; skim, and pour into glass tumblers, porcelain ...
— American Cookery - November, 1921 • Various
... that being so near we were not among the fortunate ones who saw that little flat shape skim landward out of the blue; surely they have an enviable memory; and then we fell talking and disputing about what that swift arrival may signify. It starts a swarm ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... Lucrezia Commends, not discommends, her to the eyes Of keener thinkers than I take thee for. I am an artist and an engineer, Giv'n o'er to subtile dreams of what shall be On this our planet. I foresee a day When men shall skim the earth i' certain chairs Not drawn by horses but sped on by oil Or other matter, and shall ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... to the frontier without awaiting the solution to the question. Such was his method now. He had so much to do that he could but skim the surface of his task. For the human mind, though it be colossal, can only work within certain limits. The greatest orator in the world can only move his immediate hearers. Those beyond the inner circle catch a word here and there, and imagination supplies the rest or improves ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... giovane; I am but repeating what I hear in my shop; as you may perceive, my eloquence is simply the cream which I skim off my clients' talk. Heaven forbid I should fetter my impartiality by entertaining an opinion. And for that same scholarly objection to the Greeks," added Nello, in a more mocking tone, and with a significant grimace, "the fact is, you are heretics, Messer; jealousy ...
— Romola • George Eliot |
