"Feeler" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... it was wholesome; and went off without seeming in the least dismayed by the intelligence. If Eleanor had ventured that remark as a feeler, she was utterly discomfited. She went about her pretty work of getting the little table ready and acquainting herself with the details of her cupboard arrangements, feeling a little amused ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... appropriation had not come. Harry said he had written to hurry up the money and it would be along presently. So the work continued, on Monday. Stone's Landing was making quite a stir in the vicinity, by this time. Sellers threw a lot or two on the market, "as a feeler," and they sold well. He re-clothed his family, laid in a good stock of provisions, and still had money left. He started a bank account, in a small way—and mentioned the deposit casually to friends; and to strangers, too; to everybody, in fact; but ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 3. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... neck, and hefted him, and says, 'Why, blame my cats if he don't weigh five pound!' and turned him upside down, and he belched out a double handful of shot. And then he see how it was, and he was the maddest man—he set the frog down and took out after that feeler, but ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... a "feeler," to see what kind of a man the white chief was. The white chief, whose name was Lieutenant-Colonel E. S. Otis, of the Twenty-second Infantry, ...
— Boys' Book of Indian Warriors - and Heroic Indian Women • Edwin L. Sabin
... of aesthetics, with the preposterousness of such an unaesthetic personage as Immanuel Kant enthroned in its centre! Think of german books on religions-philosophie, with the heart's battles translated into conceptual jargon and made dialectic. The most persistent setter of questions, feeler of objections, insister on satisfactions, is the religious life. Yet all its troubles can be treated with absurdly little technicality. The wonder is that, with their way of working philosophy, individual Germans should preserve any spontaneity ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... Prophet set a man by the name of Sidney Hay Jacobs to select from the Old Bible such scriptures as pertained to polygamy, or celestial marriage, with instructions to write it in pamphlet form. This he did as a feeler among the people, to pave the way for celestial marriage. Like all other novelties, it met with opposition, though a ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee
... had always escaped the interviewer there was little occasion for her having got it into her head that people were "after" the letters. People had not been after them, inasmuch as they had not heard of them; and Cumnor's fruitless feeler would have ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James
... what your relations with her have been," returned Robert, "and I'm not curious to know, but it does look like a bit of injustice all around, don't you think—unless you intend to marry her?" This last was put forth as a feeler. ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... a feeler on the subject of dominos and checkers, and observed in a general way that "seven up" was a capital game; but I repulsed ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... man in bed. Had he done this artistic bit of acting for the purpose of spending his Christmas on the flat of his back talking to a prosy old doctor? He lay still, trying to think what answer could be made to this physician who told him seriously that he had appendicitis. He put out a feeler. ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... movement at once. Skill in hunting, next to success on the war-path, constitutes the great merit of an Indian; and it is ever his delight to show that he possesses it. No sooner did le Bourdon throw out his feeler, therefore, than a general exclamation proclaimed the readiness of all the young men, in particular, to join in ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... you if you ever get it straight. I've been able to tap, indirectly," Mr. Simmons went on, "the solicitor of your usurping cousin, and he evidently knows something to be in the wind. It seems your elder brother twenty years ago put out a feeler. So you're not to have the glory of even making ...
— A Passionate Pilgrim • Henry James
... The two outer wings are partly horny, and in folding lap over each other. Butterflies and moths are much alike in appearance but differ in habit. The butterfly works by day and the moth by night. Note the knob on the end of the butterfly's feeler (Fig. 143). The moth has ...
— Agriculture for Beginners - Revised Edition • Charles William Burkett
... under a tumbler on my window-sill, in order to see the issue. Holding a microscope to the first-mentioned red ant, I saw that, though he was assiduously [Footnote: Assiduously: diligently, laboriously.] gnawing at the near foreleg of his enemy, having severed his remaining feeler, his own breast was all torn away, exposing what vitals he had there to the jaws of the black warrior, whose breast-plate was apparently too thick for him to pierce; and the dark carbuncles of the sufferer's eyes shone with ferocity such ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... dream, whether Seeley would publish them: I should give them unity, you know, by the doctrinal essays; nor do I think these would be the least agreeable. You must give me your advice and tell me whether I should throw out this delicate feeler to R. S.[16]; or if not, what I am to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a frightful whirlpool is formed in which the first canoe went and was overturned, and five lives lost. Had I been there, mine would have been the first canoe, for the traders would have made it a point of honour to give me the precedence (although actually to make a feeler of me), while they looked on in safety. The men in charge of Hassani's canoes were so frightened by this accident that they at once resolved to return, though they had arrived in the country of the ivory: ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... not as the reader knows, require to ask this question, but she put it as a sort of feeler to ascertain how far Billy might ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne
... the sister element of air. I had returned to the West; and while there, wandering in various places, I went to a small town, hardly more than a hamlet, some few hundred miles beyond the Missouri, where the mighty railroad, putting out a long feeler for the future, had halted its great steel branch—sinking like a thunderbolt into the ground for no imaginable reason, and affecting me vaguely with a sense of utmost limits. There a younger friend, five years my junior, ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... again, and again came the feeler after a smile, the expression of droll sweetness ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... thank those who have shown you kindness. Your acquaintances and mine must be separate. Unless, indeed, I run the chances of a court-martial, or unless you and my father would come to Spain.' He threw out this last suggestion as a kind of feeler; and then suddenly made the plunge. 'You don't know how I wish you would. I have a good position—the chance of a better,' continued he, reddening like a girl. 'That Dolores Barbour that I was telling you of, Margaret—I only wish you knew her; ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... exhibiting. This, because a more insidious, is a safer introduction. The living figures are dressed to imitate plaster-of-Paris, and are so arranged as to form groups, called in the bills "classical;" but for which it would be difficult to find originals. In short, the whole thing is a feeler thrown out to see how far French impudence and French epicureanism in vice may carry themselves. It shall not be our fault if they do not experience an ignominious downfall, and beat a speedy retreat, to the tune of the "Rogue's March," arranged as ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... that led to the water's edge. Underneath waved the sea-forest—pink thread-like trees, velvet anemones, and orange berry-spotted weeds. Now a stone on the bottom moved, rocked, and there was a glimpse of a black feeler; now a thread-like creature wavered by and was lost. Something was happening to the pink, waving trees; they were changing to a cold moonlight blue. And now there sounded the faintest "plop." Who made that sound? What was going on down there? And how strong, how damp the seaweed smelt in ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... is not worth while. I am only anxious the villain should be secure." This of course was a feeler. ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... He ventured a crafty "feeler." "I hear, however, that the state authorities have asked assistance of the secret service people in Washington. That would seem to indicate that there is ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... folded to show two columns in their full length, and handed it to Triscoe, who took it with no great eagerness, and began to run his eye over it. "You tell me what you think of that. I've put it out for a kind of a feeler. I got some money in that paper, and I just thought I'd let our people see how a city can be managed on ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... gathered in the cellar of Pervyse. An occasional shell was heard in the middle distance, as artillery beyond the Yser threw a lazy feeler over to the railway station. The three women were entertaining a distinguished guest at the evening meal of tinned rabbit and dates. Their visitor was none other than F. Ainslie-Barkleigh, the famous English war-correspondent. He was dressed for the part. He wore high ...
— Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason
... very acutely, that I have a great influence over Mr. Saffron. You ask, very properly, whether he has relations. I think you threw out a feeler about his money affairs, whether he had anything to worry about was your phrase, wasn't it? Am I misinterpreting what was ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... appeared in the Nineteenth Century. In the current number of the same review Mr. Mivart has another theological article on "Happiness in Hell." He says he took advice before writing it, so he speaks with permission, if not with authority. Such an article, being a kind of feeler, was better as the work of a layman. If it did not answer, the Church was not committed; if it did answer, the Church's professional penmen could follow it ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... pour la decouverte des environs de la riviere du Mississipi et pour voir si elle est navigable jusqu'a la mer. It is a memorandum of propositions to be made to the minister Seignelay, and was apparently put forward as a feeler, before making the propositions in form. It was written after the return of Beaujeu to France, and before La Salle's death became known. It intimates that the Jesuits were entitled to precedence in the Valley of the Mississippi, as having first explored it. It affirms that La Salle had made a blunder ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... women, rather in the way that dogs were much more interesting than cats. Men, like dogs, were much more satisfactory: that was it. Her mind was throwing out feelers towards the wonders of the world and this was the feeler that was most developed. She came to her sisters very highly sensitive to the difference between men and women. And her ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... catching and holding food. We will use a shorter word and call them feelers. They are set in circles round the top of the Anemone, and there are many of them. The Daisy Anemone, for instance, has over seven hundred feelers. Each feeler can be moved from side to side, and can also be tucked away, out of sight and out of danger; but, when hungry, the animal spreads them widely, for, as we shall see, they are the net in which it ...
— On the Seashore • R. Cadwallader Smith
... out a tentative feeler of thought toward the mind behind that expressionless face. He expected to find it difficult to do, because of long disuse of the faculty. But he was amazed both at the ease with which the technique returned to him, and with the feeling of warm friendliness ...
— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans
... the body. He felt himself dragged helplessly towards the capacious maw where he had already seen so many creatures conveyed. "Oh, master, master! help, help!" he shouted at the top of his voice, though a feeler getting round his neck ...
— The Seven Champions of Christendom • W. H. G. Kingston
... T. Carver, of Vinal Haven, had in his possession a female lobster, about 11 inches long, of a bright-red color all over, except the forward half of the right side of the carapace and the feeler on this side, which were of the ...
— The Lobster Fishery of Maine - Bulletin of the United States Fish Commission, Vol. 19, Pages 241-265, 1899 • John N. Cobb
... after all, be the weight of this bracelet?" P'ing Erh observed. "It was once our lady Secunda's. She says that this is called the 'shrimp-feeler'-bracelet. But it's the pearl, which increases its weight. That minx Ch'ing Wen is as fiery as a piece of crackling charcoal, so were anything to be told her, she may, so little able is she to curb her temper, flare up suddenly into a huff, and beat or scold her, and kick up as much fuss ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... sheer pleasure to outline a proposition to a white gentleman who received it so agreeably. Fifteen minutes after the first tentative overtures had been thrown out feeler-wise, Red Hoss found that he and Riley were in complete accord on all salient points. Indeed they already were as partners jointly ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... of it, frankness is not one of her characteristics. I tried to question her about this man. I had seen them together in the Park, talking as intimates. So, when our conversation had reached a friendly stage, I threw out a feeler or two, just to satisfy myself ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... coral and butter, after pounding until smooth in a mortar, also the yolk of egg, beaten and diluted with the lemon juice, and the lobster meat chopped rather coarsely. When cold shape into cutlets, dust over with sifted coral, and insert a bit of feeler or claw into the small end of each. Pour a little aspic into a dish, and, when it sets, arrange the cutlets upon it a little distance apart; pour over each a few spoonfuls of aspic, and when set cover with more aspic. When cold and very firm cut out ...
— Salads, Sandwiches and Chafing-Dish Dainties - With Fifty Illustrations of Original Dishes • Janet McKenzie Hill
... calculation—over and above the prized little pleasure it might give him—of ten minutes clear with his host, whom it rarely befell him to see alone. He had a theory of something special to go into, of a plummet to sink or a feeler to put forth; his state of mind in short was diplomatic and anxious. But his hopes had a drop as he crossed the threshold. His precaution had only assured him the company of a stranger, for the person in the room to whom ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... as a former Montana tough who used to hang around Havre—bronco-buster, cow-puncher, and tin-horn by turns. Many a time I've caught him sizing me up, in Cow Run and elsewhere—mighty hard, too, but he never seemed to be sure of me. Once he did chance a feeler, but I just twirled my moustache, a la Lord Tomnoddy, and bluffed him ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... thousand; said it would be selling his daughter if he took any less. Now I knew you couldn't raise that much on any property you have, especially in these hard times—" Geary paused for the fraction of an instant; he had thrown out the last remark as a feeler, to see what Vandover would say; but his chum said nothing, staring vaguely at the opposite wall, merely making a faint sign to show that he understood, closing his eyes and bending his head. "And so," continued the other, "I jewed him down, and what do you suppose? Well, sir, from twenty-five ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris |
