a touch something of
a touch, something of a smack in them ₁
a touch. Something of the coarseness of ₂
to loose at a touch something of the mystery and
beauty that lay locked up, mute, only potential in
picking cotton; to have his fingers on the keys ₃
sources
- ...“He must do errands in the palace gratis; but he claims the leavings of cheese which he toasts!” Of the Chief of Song we, being ourselves inclined to rhyming sometimes, lament to say his perquisites had “a touch, something of a smack in them,” for though “he ought to commence singing in praise of God, and then in praise of the king
who owns the court;” he also “claims four pence from every woman, who may have formerly slept with men.”
ex a series of comments on, and extracts from, The Ancient Laws of Cambria, containing the Institutional Triads of Dynwal Moelmud, the Laws of Howel the Good, &c. &c. Translated from the Welsh by William Probert (London, 1823), in The Literary Gazette and Journal of Belles Lettres, Arts, Sciences, &c. No. 354 (London; Saturday, November 1, 1823) : 694 : link
- ...Lincoln’s humor was rollicking, human fun — without sting of bitterness. By it he relieved the burden of a melancholy of which every man who knows and feels life deeply must have a touch.
Something of the coarseness of the common earth from which he sprang clung to him. But when we think of his surroundings as boy and young man, the loafers round the country stores, the rough farm hands, the flatboatmen on the rivers where he worked, the wonder is that his spirit came away as clean as it did.
ex Robert Charles Denison, “Abraham Lincoln, The Human” (“Restored from notes prepared for address given on ‘Parent-Students Day,’ February 11, 1928”), in The Pomona College Quarterly Magazine 16:3 (March 1928) 114-119 (115) : link
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...suffered picking cotton under an August sun. As the hart panted for the water brooks, so panted his soul after music. To have his fingers on the keys, to loose at ] a touch something of the mystery and beauty that lay locked up, mute, only potential in the mahogany case — surely that was the supreme bliss. A piano to his father — and all who felt as he did — was a mere useless assemblage of ...
ex Ruth Cross, The Big Road (1931) : 49 : link (snippet only)
—
Ruth Cross (1887-1981)
Texas novelist (lived also in Chicago, New York/Connecticut; later Louisiana; several novels available at hathtrust, but alas not this)
see Sylvia Whitman, “Ruth Cross: A Journey Through Literature and Life” (1995, updated 2021), at Handbook of Texas Online (Texas State Historical Society) website : link (accessed 20250515)
“a touch of something” yields too many results, “a something of touch,” none.
but the above obtained via mistyped entry (“a touch something of”) in search terms.
thanks to kls.