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The keen-eyed man who sat tapping a gold pencil case on his thumbnail in the intervals of taking notes had a reputation to maintain which he was not unwilling to increase; foreign clients were by no means rare, but they did not come every day, nor were they always so apparently full of wealth as this stern-faced Englishman, who spoke authoritatively as one accustomed to being obeyed and yet with a turn of phrase and politesse unusual in his countrymen.
Then the trap is unstrapped, the stool opened, the easel put up, and you set your palette. The critical eye with which you look over your brush case and the care with which you try each feather point upon your thumbnail are but an index of your enjoyment. Now you are ready.
"We were just going to put our hands on the great secret, we only wanted a scrap of July sun, for monsieur, ah, what a man! he's almost in the shoes of the good God himself! was almost within THAT," he said to Josette, clicking his thumbnail against a front tooth, "of getting hold of the Absolute, when up she came, slam bang, screaming some nonsense about notes of hand."
Two hundred and fifty pounds a time from the Daily Oracle for thumbnail sketches of the Human Firebrand! Lord, what is any one depressed for in this country! It's chock-full of humour. If I lived here long, I should be fat." He looked downward at his figure with complacency. Julia laughed softly. "Aren't you fat now?" she asked. "Immense," he confessed, "but it's nothing to what I could be.
Faces, insignificant incidents, thumbnail sketches and broad, bustling panorama of activity alternated with the blank spaces. The heroic and the preposterous were indistinguishable.... At the first sound of the explosion of the torpedo Cecily jumped to her feet, scattering the chocolates broadcast over the deck. The ship seemed to lift bodily out of the water and then heeled over a little to port.
That night I learned to shiver and shake. The corpse of a woman came up to me where I lay in the loft, and stretched out its left hand to show me: the thumbnail was missing. I shook my head, to say I had had a thumbnail once, but I had thrown it away, and used a shell instead. But the corpse stood there all the same, and there I lay, shivering, cold with fear.
His own appearance is not heroic or dignified enough for him, and he is not duped by an artist who flatters him: 'Heigh-ho, he exclaims, on seeing Holbein's thumbnail sketch illustrating the Moria: 'if Erasmus still looked like that, he would take a wife at once'. It is that deep trait of dissatisfaction that suggests the inscription on his portraits: 'his writings will show you a better image'.
French, German, English, Russian, Austrian, American, Italian they all brought me a picture of their tribal characteristics, trivial, thumbnail sketches, but nevertheless true to life. It may be urged that holiday-makers do not constitute reliable material for the observation of national peculiarities. I am not so sure.
With an accurately sighted rifle and a thumbnail pack of patience cards the sportswoman awaited the coming of the quarry. "I suppose we are in some danger?" said Miss Mebbin. She was not actually nervous about the wild beast, but she had a morbid dread of performing an atom more service than she had been paid for. "Nonsense," said Mrs. Packletide; "it's a very old tiger.
Garibaldi knows how to do things quickly; he has already tied his apron, and is on the point of passing his opinion on the work in the workshop. He takes the bottle from Pelle, throws it over his shoulder, catches it with the other hand, sets his thumb against the middle of the bottle, and drinks. Then he shows the bottle to the others. "Just to the thumbnail, eh?"
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