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A peach-cheeked witch, a cherry-lipped conjuress; a Circe, with only enough charms to make a respectable photograph, might with impunity have called him a counterfeiter, or a horse-thief, or even a thimble-rigger; or might have told him that he would, upon opportunity, garotte his grandmother for the small price of seventy cents and her snuff-box; or that he was in the habit of attending funerals to pick the pockets of the mourners, and of going to church that he might steal the pennies from the poor-box, all this would he have borne uncomplainingly from a woman; but these unpalatable statements from one of the masculine gender would be “most tolerable and not to be endured.”
He seemed to be reviewing something in his mind. "Fate," he observed sententiously, "is a cheap thimble-rigger." "Fate," she said, "is the ghost around the corner." "A dark green, sixty-horse-power ghost, operated by a matinée hero, a movie close-up, a tailor's model " "If you mean Reg, it's just as well for you he isn't here." "Pooh!" retorted the vengeful and embittered Dyke.
"I can't tell you precisely, but you must get her on a diet and keep her there. I will write out some lists for you after my luncheon." Lee found her mother sitting in such dejection as she had never known her to display, though she fired up sufficiently to say: "That cussed little thimble-rigger has been throwing a great big scare into me.
We all know what was the doom of the first child born of man, and it is needless for me to say that I do not wish the spirit of Cain more widely diffused amongst my fellow-creatures. By vagabonds, I do not mean a tramp or a gipsy, or a thimble-rigger, or a brawler who is brought up with a black eye before a magistrate in the morning.
His gold never reaches his own pocket; it is filched from him by dexterous thieves; it gleams before him for an instant like the coin spun in the air by the conjurer or thimble-rigger, and then vanishes for ever. Yet I have found few men keen enough to penetrate the delusion; it would seem they love to be deluded, and by their conduct justify the satiric lines of Hudibras
Hence the chequered career of the thimble-rigger. Had the municipality been seized by open force, there might have been complaint, it would not have aroused the same lasting grudge. This grudge was an ill gift to bring to Brandeis, who had trouble enough in front of him without.
Never before has a country so justly and so richly deserved the repudiation of a debt incurred by the confidence trick. Not a civilised Government in the world would dream of enforcing payment, any more than a magistrate would enforce a payment to some thimble-rigger returning from a race-meeting.
I talk to nobody about ’orses except lords.’ ‘Well,’ said I, ‘I have been called a lord in my time.’ ‘It must have been by a thimble-rigger, then,’ said the coachman, bending back, and half turning his face round with a broad leer. ‘You have hit the mark wonderfully,’ said I. ‘You coachmen, whatever else you may be, are certainly no fools.’ ‘We ain’t, ain’t we?’ said the coachman. ‘There you are right; and, to show you that you are, I’ll now trouble you for your fare.
He looked "rather wild" at times and he had a way of clenching his fist when he was determined not to be put upon, as the bullying coachman found who had said: "One-and-ninepence, sir, or the things which you have brought with you will be taken away from you." Yet he had small hands for his size and "long white fingers," which "would just serve for the business," said the thimble-rigger.
It is only necessary to reflect upon the unbounded reverence felt by all good Mussulmen for these exalted dignitaries, to comprehend the height of distinction thus attained by the Palermo thimble-rigger.
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