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More "Plank" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... soil to a fine surface; huge lumps of tenacious earth are turned up by the plough, which, under the baking influence of the sun, become as hard as sun-dried bricks. The native method of crushing is exceedingly rude and ineffective. A heavy plank about sixteen feet long and three inches thick, furnished with two rings, is dragged by oxen over the surface; which generally remains in so rough a state that walking over the field is most laborious. ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... moment, when we thought we were off? Another car to be attached, carrying to the Pacific coast Rarus and Sweetzer, the fastest trotter and pacer, respectively, in the world. How we advance! Shades of Flora Temple and "2.40 on the plank road!" That was the cry when first I took to horses—that is, to owning them. At a much earlier age I was stealing a ride on every thing within reach that had four legs and could go. One takes to horseflesh by inheritance. Rarus now goes in 2.13-1/4, and ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... everywhere full of charm. The Horner Water descends from the moors and babbles its way through the valley to the sea. It receives on the right a contributary rill which flows through a combe that rivals the main valley in romantic beauty. The second plank-bridge across the water will lead up a very steep footpath ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... a slight sonority, and he presently perceived that he was rapping on wood. He then rubbed the spot vigorously with his handkerchief, and beneath the thick layer of dust and dirt which he thus removed he found a piece of oak plank carefully inserted in the wall. On one side of this plank was a small round hole; it was that of the lock which ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... of ground should be laid out; and there should be erected thereon, a couple of posts, about twenty feet apart, and sixteen feet high, which should support a plank, about a foot wide, and six inches thick; on the underside of this might be affixed a hook, from which a triangle might be swung,—this is capable of being used in a variety of ways. Two more hooks, about a foot apart, might be used for ...
— The Book of Sports: - Containing Out-door Sports, Amusements and Recreations, - Including Gymnastics, Gardening & Carpentering • William Martin
... Montaigne was warped into the dock. The piles of first-class baggage on the ship were raucously deposited on the wharf and slowly the passengers filed down the plank to meet the line of white-capped uniformed inspectors and plain-clothes appraisers. The comedy and tragedy of the ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... words, Front-de-Boeuf led the way to a postern where, passing the moat on a single plank, they reached a small barbican, or exterior defense, which communicated with the open field ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... in front of the Gallery opposite, the pulpit, the books and cushions, a part of the windows, the Stoves, a large proportion of the pipes of a Splendid Organ which was split open with an axe for that purpose, and some of the plank broken from the pews—all was destroyed; and but for the real and practical sympathy of many of our esteemed citizens in braving dangers of no common magnitude, a like destruction had been the fate ...
— Seaport in Virginia - George Washington's Alexandria • Gay Montague Moore
... square. As the ship came-to, she took a sea in on her starboard side, which drove poor Bill to leeward, under some water-casks and boards, beating in two of his ribs. Both mates were injured also, and were off duty in consequence for several weeks. The plank sheer was ripped off the vessel from aft to amidships, as neatly as if it had been done by the carpenters. We could look down among the timbers the same as if the vessel ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper
... Alfred excelled himself. John had left early for the stream, and being in a hurry took advantage of the thin plank crossing. Now the plank is very slippery and had been placed over the spot where the stream is deepest. John crossed it carefully enough, but looking back for a second he suddenly noticed that Alfred was following him. Before he could raise his voice in protest ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 13, 1920 • Various
... and punched itself in a furious passion of pleasure. They make plates in the Five Towns. They live by making plates. They understand plates. In the Five Towns a man will carry not seven but twenty-seven dozen plates on a swaying plank for eight hours a day up steps and down steps, and in doorways and out of doorways, and not break one plate in seven years! Judge, therefore, the simple but terrific satisfaction of a Five Towns audience in the hugeness of the calamity. Moreover, ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... marked cask which had excited his curiosity, he found himself in the way of the deck-hand in the blue shirt, who, with red face and sparkling forehead, had just wheeled two heavy boxes up the incline of the gang-plank, and was about to roll them with easy rapidity to the other side of the deck; but Lodloe, with his back turned and directly in front of him, made it necessary for him to make a violent swerve to the right or to break the legs of a passenger. He made the ...
— The Squirrel Inn • Frank R. Stockton
... joined structure upon which he rode the waters so insecurely began to disintegrate, until but one scarcely sufficing plank remained. ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... kettles, covered with rust, and an overthrown pot. A cupboard, with a few moldy sailor's clothes; on the table a tin plate and a Bible, eaten away by damp; in a corner a few tools, a spade, pickaxe, two fowling-pieces, one of which was broken; on a plank, forming a shelf, stood a barrel of powder, still untouched, a barrel of shot, and several boxes of caps, all thickly covered with dust, accumulated, ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... put up wi' no airs like he've a-give'd me. Yu've got to du what yu'm told, sharp, an' yu mustn't luke [look] what yu thinks, let 'lone say it, or else yu'll find yourself in chokey [cells] 'fore yu knows where yu are. 'Tis like walking on a six-inch plank, in the Navy, full o' rules an' regylations; an' he won't get fed like he was at home nuther, ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... a common game are shrewd. Juliana may have seen that Rose was not steady on the plank she ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... about 6 P.M. I was crossing on a plank over a gully, on my return from an expedition to Golden Island, when three rounds of cheers from the 'Furious,' about a mile off, struck my ear. Three rounds of cheers, followed by as many from the other ships. ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... Service was away, will be a fourth. For the remaining offices, Messrs. Pearson and Deakin of the Radicals, and Gillies of the Conservatives, are the most likely men. Such a Government of all the talents, with Civil Service Reform as the first plank in its platform, should rival the length and strength of the Parkes-Robertson Coalition, which lasted four years, and would be infinitely superior to it in ability. As for poor Sir Bryan O'Loghlen, the services he has rendered to the ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... this shore. Though almost all trace of their presence is already gone, yet their mere memory lends to these cliffs a human interest. Where a stranded vessel lies, thither all steps converge, so long as one plank remains upon another. There centres the emotion. All else is but the setting, and the eye sweeps with indifference the line of unpeopled rocks. They are barren, till the imagination has tenanted them ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... wrong," replied the other, "we've scraped through so far and maybe we'll scrape through to the end. My main wish is to have a plank under foot again, there ain't no give and take in land, I'm never surefooted on land, there's no lift in it. I reckon I'm like one of them sea chickens not used to solid stuff underfoot. D'you know what ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... 1818. It was found that the customhouse rule then in effect measured length between perpendiculars above the upper deck, from "foreside of the main stem" to the "after side of the sternpost." The beam was measured outside of plank at the widest point in the hull, above the main wales. If a vessel were single-decked, the depth was measured alongside the keelson at main hatch from ceiling to underside of deck plank; if double-decked, one-half ...
— The Pioneer Steamship Savannah: A Study for a Scale Model - United States National Museum Bulletin 228, 1961, pages 61-80 • Howard I. Chapelle
... it!" he gasped. "I forgot to shove the plank back onto the next boat and it fell into the water ...
— Boy Scouts in the North Sea - The Mystery of a Sub • G. Harvey Ralphson
... owner of this derived quite a little income of meal by shrewdly loaning it to his knifeless comrades. The shapes that we made for pieces and pawns were necessarily very rude, but they were sufficiently distinct for identification. We blackened one set with pitch pine soot, found a piece of plank that would answer for a board and purchased it from its possessor for part of a ration of meal, and so were fitted out with what served until our release to distract our attention from ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... wave there till better days; and each Municipal sat in the centre of his Section, in a Tent raised in some open square, Tent surmounted with flags of Patrie en danger, and topmost of all a Pike and Bonnet Rouge; and, on two drums in front of him, there lay a plank-table, and on this an open Book, and a Clerk sat, like recording-angel, ready to write the Lists, or as we say to enlist! O, then, it seems, the very gods might have looked down on it. Young Patriotism, Culottic and Sansculottic, rushes forward emulous: That is my ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... Free Traders or Tariff Reformers, we have to reckon with the fact that almost every Indian is a Protectionist at heart, whatever he may be in theory. The Indian National Congress has hitherto fought shy of making Protection a prominent plank of its platform, lest it should offend its political friends in England. Yet as far back as 1902 a politician as careful as Mr. Surendranath Banerjee to avoid in his public utterances anything that might alienate British Radicalism, declared in his inaugural address at the 18th session of ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... This while the engine which the tempest cold Had saved from burning with his friendly blast, Approached had so near the battered hold That on the walls her bridge at ease she cast: But Solyman ran thither fierce and bold, To cut the plank whereon the Christians passed. And had performed his will, save that upreared High in the skies a ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... insufferable. She could not endure that her fat, lazy husband should amuse himself at games while lying in his bed; and whenever she caught him beginning a game she pounced furiously on the dominoes, overturned the plank, and carried all away into the bar, declaring that it was quite enough to have to feed that fat, lazy pig without seeing him amusing himself, as if to annoy poor people who had to ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... to churn in the water, and the vessel to move slowly, but with a swift vibration in every plank of her which promised speed when once she had gathered way. I was suspicious enough already, though in so vague a fashion that I hardly guessed what I suspected, and I recall the fact that I was not in the least surprised when I heard a cry from Ruffiano's ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... Stanton's cruising launch was no lemon. It proved to be staunch and solid. There wasn't a rotten plank in her. Her sorry appearance was merely the superficial shabbiness which comes from disuse and this the boys had neither the time nor the money to remedy; but the hull and the ...
— Tom Slade at Temple Camp • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... one has said, to plow is to pray, we've been doing a heap of mouth-worship on Alabama Ranch this last few weeks. But the final acre has been turned over, the final long sea of furrows disked and plank-dragged and seeded down, and after the heavy rains of Thursday night there's just the faintest tinge of green, here and there, along my ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... faction in the state—of a faction of the best, which would cleave the state to the centre, which would resist with the zealot's fire unto blood and desperation the unholy innovation—that would stand on the last plank of the wrecked order, and wade through seas of slaughter to restore it; the prospect of untried political innovation, under such circumstances, did not present itself to this Poet's imagination in a form so absolutely alluring, as it might have done to a philosopher ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... not take long over our dinner—we were too anxious to get to work again—and as soon as we had finished we selected from our supply of fire-wood four straight poles, each about ten feet long, and with these, a number of short pieces of six-inch plank, a hammer, a saw and a bag of nails, we drove back to ...
— The Boys of Crawford's Basin - The Story of a Mountain Ranch in the Early Days of Colorado • Sidford F. Hamp
... respectfully from the pair, who were in the shadow of a great spar, with the glimmer of the binnacle just in front of them. The square sail had been lowered, and the engines started, and a steady, faint throb kept the yacht mysteriously alive in every plank of her. The gramophone and the shuffle of feet continued, because Mr. Gilman had expressly desired that his momentary defection with a lady and in obedience to duty should not bring the ball to an end. Laughter and even giggles came from the ballroom. Males were dancing together. The power of ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... affair and of Saint-Just's exultation were never out of her ears. They followed her to her trial eight years later before the revolutionary tribunal. They followed her to the very scaffold, of which they had undoubtedly supplied a plank. ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... around the old Lloyd place were athrill with busy spring doings and all sprinkled through with young lights and shadows. Some of their delight found its way into the Old Lady's bitter heart as she wandered through them, and when she came out at the little plank bridge over the brook down under the beeches, she felt almost gentle and tender once more. There was one big beech there, in particular, which the Old Lady loved for reasons best known to herself—a great, tall ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... skies, and she stood out sharply, almost ecstatically. Against such superb forces of man, the forces of Nature seemed dwarfed. It was a lyric in steel and iron. Men hurried from the landing-stage, up the plank, vanishing into the sly glooms of the huge port-holes. Chains rang and rattled. Lascars of every kind flashed here and there: Arabs, Chinkies, Japs, Malays, East Indians. Talk in every lingo was ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... a few words what it was all about, comforted Dora, and gradually convinced her that I was not a labourer—from my manner of stating the case I believe Dora concluded that I was a navigator, and went balancing myself up and down a plank all day with a wheelbarrow—and so brought us together in peace. When we were quite composed, and Dora had gone up-stairs to put some rose-water to her eyes, Miss Mills rang for tea. In the ensuing interval, I told Miss Mills that she was evermore my friend, and that my heart must ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... butting from the river steamer in question as to cause her to careen and fill. Being, unfortunately, loaded with gravel on this particular trip, she subsided incontinently to the bottom of San Pablo Bay, while Neils and his crew of two men sought refuge on a plank. ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... torture, the kind where they keep you alive to have more fun killing you." He straightened himself with a sudden blush. "Oh, I'm all right now—getting on capitally. But I'm still walking rather a narrow plank; and if I do your work well enough—if ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... corded down, with the newly hatched auk-chicks in a hat-box on top. She and I placed the osier cage aboard, securing it firmly, and then, throwing tablecloths over the auks' heads, we led those simple and dignified birds down the path and across the plank at the little wooden pier. Together we locked up the house, while Halyard stormed at us both and wheeled himself furiously up and down the beach below. At the last moment she forgot her thimble. But we found it, ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... and it seemed impossible for our vehicle to get aboard; but the boat had a long shovel-like nose projecting from the bow which ran upon the shore, making a perfect gang-plank. ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... doing so carried away her own iron prow, together with the cutwater, without apparently doing her adversary much injury. The Lackawanna, Captain Marchand, was the next vessel to strike her, which she did at full speed; but though her stem was cut and crushed to the plank-ends for the distance of three feet above the water's edge to five feet below, the only perceptible effect on the ram was to ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... is now only used with reference to the top of a room—the ceiling. It is an old English word, and means overlaid or lined with wood, wainscot, or plank, either roof, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... possessed, it did not take me long to pack. My trunk was a piece of brown paper with a pin lock. They landed me at a point where the bank was about one hundred feet high, and so steep that a goat could not climb it. They commenced to pull in the plank, when the steward yelled out to the Captain, "that he could not get along without that boy," and asked him to let me go as far as Nashville. I was told to come aboard, which I did, and I remained on that boat for one year, during which time I learned to play "seven-up," and ...
— Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi • George H. Devol
... the admiration and happiness of all nations. But free-loveism struck it from one side, and Mormonism struck it from another side, and hurricanes of libertinism have struck it on all sides, until the old ship needs repairs in every plank, and beam, and sail, and bolt, and clamp, and transom, and stanchion. In other words, the notions of modern society must be reconstructed on the subject of the marriage institution. And when we have got it back somewhere near what it was when God built it in Paradise, ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... to fight; I see by your looks you are. But that's not enough—you must make up your minds to fight well. You know that pirates give no quarter. I see the decks are swarming with men. If you don't go at them like bull-dogs, you'll walk the plank before sunset every man of you. Now, go forward, and double-shot your muskets and pistols, and stick as many of the latter into your belts as they will hold. Mr. Thompson, let the gunner double-shot the four big guns, and load ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... code of honor; but, then, I should have had to renounce all idea of marrying Mademoiselle Marguerite, so I was obliged to find some other way. I could not choose my means. The drowning man does not reject the plank, which is his only chance of salvation, because it ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... Ebenezer Plank'ses, who took in a few boarders, bein' middlin' well off, and havin' a very nice house to start with, but wanted to add a little to her income, so she took in a few and done well by 'em, so our pasture said, and so we found out. ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... which can fall back in time of need on a plank for their dinner, require a very different-sized cooking apparatus to that of the Carnivora. Thus the rat, the most perfect sample of the rodent order, possesses a digestive tube of a prodigious length, ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... this instinct of dread, before their walk was over, before she had guided him round to one of the smaller gates, there to slip off again by herself, was positively to find on the bosom of her flood a plank by the aid of which she kept in a manner and for the time afloat. She took ten minutes to pant, to blow gently, to paddle disguisedly, to accommodate herself, in a word, to the elements she had let loose; but as a reward of her effort at least she then saw ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... body, whilst memory can remember the dreams of only the preceding moment, whilst a single faculty of heart or intellect remains by which your image can be preserved, I shall cling to that image as the shipwrecked sailor would to the plank that bears him through the midnight storm—as a despairing soul would to the only good act of a wicked life that he could plead for ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... when up drove Si Pettingill with a load of brooms. Wall, we all took a long breath, and got ready to see some as tall bargainin' as wuz ever done in Punkin Centre. 'Cause Si, he could see a bargain through a six-inch plank on a dark night, and Ezra could hear a dollar bill rattle in a bag of feathers a mile off, and we all felt mighty sartin suthin' wuz a goin' to happen. Wall, Si, he sort er stood 'round, didn't say much, and Ezra got most uncommonly busy—he had more business ...
— Uncles Josh's Punkin Centre Stories • Cal Stewart
... up the cabin and cut a hole in the plank underneath. The sugar house stood on a foundation of stone which raised the floor four feet above the ground, and gave us sufficient room to work, and to convey away the dirt ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... side by side. They were then lashed tightly together with bag string and binder twine, and a gang plank laid between them. In a moment the pirates swarmed upon our deck, rolling their eyes, gnashing their teeth and filing ...
— Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... Johnson party lines had been strengthened and defined so that no Unionist, not in sympathy with congressional reconstruction, could hope for the nomination. No other issue equaled this in strength. The greenback issue was condemned in a plank that denounced "all forms of repudiation as a national crime," but ran second to the basis of reconstruction. No other candidate than Ulysses S. Grant was considered at ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... Persian girls and fourscore Kurd and fourscore and ten Georgian women and Tigris and Euphrates and a fowling net and a flint and steel and Many- Columned Irem[FN154] and a thousand rogues and pimps and horse- courses and stables and mosques and baths and a builder and a carpenter and a plank and a nail and a black slave, with a pair of recorders, and a captain and a caravan-leader and towns and cities and a hundred thousand dinars and Cufa and Ambar[FN155] and twenty chests full of stuffs and twenty ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume III • Anonymous
... telling you," said Mr. Ashton, "that Mr. Carrington has died since I left there. But you will hardly win this fair, haughty lady, unless you can plank about a million. But there are other faces quite as pretty, I think. There is a Julia Middleton, who is attending school. She is a great beauty, but, if report speaks truly, she would keep you busily employed ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... a confused recollection of being swept along by an irresistible current, clinging the while to what he afterwards found to be a friendly plank, and ...
— Vandrad the Viking - The Feud and the Spell • J. Storer Clouston
... ship-lap-board houses boldly fronted the prairie. A few had shallow verandas that relieved their bareness, but the rest were frankly ugly, and in some the front was carried up level with the roof-ridge, giving them a harsh squareness of outline. A plank sidewalk, raised a foot or two above the ground, ran along the street, where the black soil was torn ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... perpetrated after the fashion of Captain Kidd in his worst days. It shows a complete lack of even a faint acquaintance with the small amenities that help to smooth the ruts in social intercourse to not only order a personage of Adam's standing and reputation to "walk the plank," but to push him off. Besides, it shows an utter disregard for the feelings of that large body of people who do not think, to wipe out, at one fell wipe, the whole scheme of creation without substituting another. If there ...
— The Onlooker, Volume 1, Part 2 • Various
... back of the house and near it was the tool shed. Then there was a carriage house, and a plank walk ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... breakwater and a sand dike have already checked the advance of the sea, and a large number of sand-hills has been formed, the rapid growth of which promises complete future security against both wind and wave. Similar effects have been produced by the erection of plank fences, and even of simple screens of wattling and reeds. [Footnote: Staring, De Bodem van Nederland, i., pp. 329-331. Id., Voormaals en Thans, p. 163. Andresen, ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... therefore placed on each other's edges, and sewed together with the tough cordage already mentioned. They were also thus sewed to the stem, the stern, and the keel. Each stitch or tie was six inches apart, and was formed thus: Three holes were bored in the upper plank and three in the lower—the holes being above each other, that is, in a vertical line. Through these holes the cord was passed, and, when tied, formed a powerful stitch of three-ply. Besides this, we placed between the edges ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... working out of the old. God be thanked that it is not! The evils are not new, they have been from the beginning; and God has surely not been so cruel to the world as to leave it till now in the dark. Our hopes are not set on any new, untried remedy. This bridge across the Infinite for us is not a frail plank on which no one has yet walked, and which may crack and break when the timid foot of the first passenger is on the centre, but it is a tried structure upon which ages ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... Livingstone decidedly. "It's just as you say; yachts and warships are exempt. Besides, I carry my own doctor, and if he won't give us a clean bill of health, I'll make him walk the plank. At eight, then, at dinner. I'll send the cutter for you. I can't give you a salute, Mr. Consul, but you shall have all the side boys I ...
— My Buried Treasure • Richard Harding Davis
... souls who had ever lived. Together they read the Stoic-slave philosopher and made notes from him. And so impressed was Marcus that, boy though he was, he adopted the simple robe of the Stoics, slept on a plank, and made his life and language plain, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... and with several seals, attracted her attention. She felt quite sure it was Mr. Kinloch's will; so she secreted it and gave the lawyer the rest. The Monday afternoon following, she took the will to her grandmother's and put it under a plank in the floor. Squire Clamp, strangely enough, chanced to stop just as she had hidden it. He gave her back the papers, as she supposed, and she replaced them in the secretary. On her way home she fell in with Hugh,—a day neither of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... minute of the attack, without a word being passed, Uncle Prudent, Phil Evans, and Frycollin felt themselves laid gently down, not on the grass, but on a sort of plank that creaked beneath them. They were laid down side ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... well seasoned hickory plank. The plank is well steamed in a wash boiler or other large kettle and then bent to a nice curve, as shown in Fig. 1. It is held in this curve until dry, with two pieces nailed on the ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... the Roquette prison some fine morning, about dawn, between a jailer and a priest, with your legs roped together and your shirt cut away at the back of the neck and then to have you bound against an upright plank and tipped forward gently under a forty-pound knife'—you see I know the details—and then, phsst! the knife falls and behold the head of De Heidelmann-Bruck in one basket and his body in another! That would ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... of creosote. It is this latter substance which has the coagulating effect upon the rubber-milk. When the supply of milk was exhausted, he lifted the ball and stick off the guides and rolled it on a smooth plank to drive the moisture out of the newly-smoked rubber. Then he was through for the day. He placed the stick on two forked branches and put some green leaves over the funnel to smother the fire. On top ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange
... off raining we might go out and have a ride on the tin-tan." It takes me some little time, and a closely-knit series of questions, to discover that tin-tan is Southshire for see-saw; and I think how Catherine would laugh at the spectacle of my bobbing up and down on one end of a plank and this little country damsel at the other. Her detestable laughter; but, thank Heaven! I need ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various
... crouched over her knees on a stile close to a river. A MAN with a silver badge stands beside her, clutching the worn top plank. THE GIRL'S level brows are drawn together; her eyes see her memories. THE MAN's eyes see THE GIRL; he has a dark, twisted face. The bright sun shines; the quiet river flows; the Cuckoo is calling; the mayflower is in bloom along the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... properly, and shifted the scene from hotel to steamer, where Franz von Blenheim, in the guise of Van Blarcom, had given her a fright. As she exhibited her passport at the gang-plank, he had read her name across her shoulder; then he had claimed acquaintance with her, a claim ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... Croston Heath, Molly had to go down a narrow lane overshadowed by trees, with picturesque old cottages dotted here and there on the steep sandy banks; and then there came a small wood, and then there was a brook to be crossed on a plank-bridge, and up the steeper fields on the opposite side were cut steps in the turfy path, which ended, she was on Croston Heath, a wide-stretching common skirted by labourers' dwellings, past which a ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... be remarked that the third house, lower down in the street, was empty, and under repair—that a long ladder was left by the workmen, leading from the pavement to the top of the house—and that, on returning to their work, on the morning of the 27th, the men found the plank which they had tied to the ladder, to prevent anyone from using it in their absence, removed, and lying on the ground. As to the possibility of ascending by this ladder, passing over the roofs of the houses, passing back, and descending again, unobserved—it is discovered, on ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... for the present; she should hear from me in due time. The man took the letter, with some remark on my not returning with them, and, with a quiet good-day, I left him and walked rapidly toward the steamer. The plank was laid from the wharf-boat, and, without daring to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... remember something Captain Ross related in the account of his voyage: he said he shot through an inch plank with a bullet of frozen mercury; if I had any oil it would amount to nearly the same thing, for he speaks of a ball of sweet almond, which was fired against a post and fell back to ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... opening at Hell Gate caught him up as though he had been a plank. It tossed him and twisted him and sucked him down. He beat his way for a second to the surface and gasped for breath and was drawn down again, striking savagely at the eddies which seemed to twist his limbs into useless, heavy masses of ...
— Van Bibber and Others • Richard Harding Davis
... conducted into a flower-garden, divided from the park by a ha-ha, over which a plank and a small gate, rusting off its hinges, were placed, Caroline led the way towards the building. At this point of view it presented a large bay window that by a flight of four steps led into the garden. On one side rose a square, narrow turret, surmounted by a gilt dome and quaint weathercock, ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book II • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... as a rule are a free and easy set, nearly all drinking men. It's warm work, and when a man is piling all day, pulling up plank after plank, he thinks a pint of beer does him good. They rush the can—first the piler, then the stager, and then the ground man, then the piler again, and so on. I've counted as many as twenty pints in one day among one gang. I soon ...
— Dave Ranney • Dave Ranney
... tamarinds, and the great leaves of the plantains all about. Within the monastery it will be all bare. However beautiful the building is without, no relaxation of his rules is allowed to the monk within. All is bare: only a few mats, perhaps, here and there on the plank floor, a hard wooden bed, a ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... the proceedings, relates that as she passed along the street under guard, Bishop "had given a look toward the great and spacious meeting-house of Salem, and immediately a daemon, invisibly entering the house, tore down a part of it." It may be guessed that a plank or a partition had given way under the pressure of the crowd of lookers-on collected ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Vol. II - The Planting Of The First Colonies: 1562—1733 • Various
... hand—the old Roman's of the time of Plancus—George Cruikshank's. There were the old bonnets and droll faces and shoes, and short trousers, and figures of 1820 sure enough. And there was George (who has taken to the water-doctrine, as all the world knows) handing some teetotal cresses over a plank to the table where the pledge was being administered. How often has George drawn that picture of Cruikshank! Where haven't we seen it? How fine it was, facing the effigy of Mr. Ainsworth in Ainsworth's Magazine when George illustrated that periodical! How grand and severe he stands in ...
— John Leech's Pictures of Life and Character • William Makepeace Thackeray
... unbroken When first he feels the rein, The furious river struggled hard, And tossed his tawny mane, 470 And burst the curb, and bounded, Rejoicing to be free, And whirling down, in fierce career, Battlement, and plank, and pier, Rushed ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... have reached was 130 miles distant. Anxiety about the condition of the boat made him resolve to continue his coasting cruise westward. Water rushed in fast through the boat's side, there was risk of a plank starting, and ploughing through a hollow, irregular sea, the explorers were, as Flinders reviewing the adventure wrote, "in the greatest danger." Bass's record of his night of peril is characteristically terse: "we had a bad night of it, but the excellent qualities ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... impassable from mud. I mean that in walking down the middle of any street in Cairo, a moderately-framed man would soon stick fast, and not be able to move. The houses are generally built at considerable intervals, and rarely face each other; and along one side of each street a plank boarding was laid, on which the mud had accumulated only up to one's ankles. I walked all over Cairo with big boots, and with my trowsers tucked up to my knees; but at the crossings I found considerable danger, and ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... enough to know, with a completeness which would have embarrassed that gentleman, what a cipher Mr. Pett was in the home and how little his championship would avail in the event of a clash with Mrs. Pett. And to give Ogden that physical treatment which should long since have formed the main plank in the platform of his education would be to invite her wrath as nothing else could. He checked himself, and reached out for the skipping-rope, hoping to ease his ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... to pass the night, and when I attempted to follow him thither, a knot of anxious idlers, who knew that I had just returned from the battle-fields, attempted to detain me by sheer force. I dashed rapidly up the plank walk, reached the portal, and had just vaulted into the area, when the great gates swung to, and the tattoo beat; at the same instant the ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... independent power of setting down a different number by which to multiply itself, what would be the result? The first 4 I wrote might set down 3 as its multiplier, and the next might set down 7, and so on. Or if I want to make a box of a certain size and cut lengths of plank accordingly, if each length could capriciously change its width at a moment's notice, how could I ever make the box? I myself may change the shape and size of my box by establishing new relations between the bits of wood, but for the pieces of wood themselves the proportions ...
— The Creative Process in the Individual • Thomas Troward
... in the field like a black stepchild. My ma had nine chilluns and I was the oldest of the nine. She said her old miss wouldn't let her come to the house to nurse me, so she would slip up under the house and crawl through a hole in the floor. She took and pulled a plank up so she could ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume II, Arkansas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... distinct parts of my life, as the angel of the Lord might appear to a soul wavering between life and death, between earth and heaven." To a common friend he wrote of her, "Her soul was to mine what the shore is to the plank shattered by the waves; and I still remember, after the lapse of twenty-five years, all the light and strength she afforded to me when I was young and unknown." He dedicated to her his "Life of Saint Dominic," saying, "I wish that some one ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... To one small plank, that fails me, Clinging low, I am dash'd by angry billows To and fro; I hear death-anthems ringing In all ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... he soon came in sight of tall cliffs which overlooked the sea, and which formed a natural harbour, wherein lay a vessel richly beseen. Its sails were of spun silk, and each plank and mast was fashioned of ebony. Dismounting, Gugemar made his way to the shore, and with much labour climbed upon the ship. Neither mariner nor merchant was therein. A large pavilion of silk covered part of the deck, and within this was a rich bed, the work ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... "Didn't you notice down by the road a pile of planks? I suppose a wagon has broke down there, and the planks have been turned out and nobody has thought anything more about 'em. We'll each take a plank, fasten our rifle and ammunition on it, and swim across; there won't be any difficulty about that. Then, when we've seen what's on the top of that 'ere hill, we'll tramp round to the other end of the lake. ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty
... point, in which the rather absurd and certainly very noisy and hoydenish manifestoes of the so-called Futurists, led by M. Marinetti and his crew of iconoclasts, are worthy of our serious attention. It is a plank in their platform to banish eroticism, of the good kind and of the bad, from the poetic practice of the future. I do not, to say the truth, find much help for the inquiry we have taken up to-day, in the manifestoes of these raucous young gentlemen, ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... And with this plank of stone still strong enough to serve, he had scraped all one corner of the office floor free of rubbish. This gave them a preliminary camping-place wherein to take their bearings and discuss what ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... the tough cordage already mentioned. They were also thus sewed to the stem, the stern, and the keel. Each stitch or tie was six inches apart, and was formed thus: Three holes were bored in the upper plank and three in the lower—the holes being above each other, that is, in a vertical line. Through these holes the cord was passed, and, when tied, formed a powerful stitch of three-ply. Besides this, we placed between the edges ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... habitation is left. Everything has been beaten into pulp by hurricanes of shell-fire. First you come to a metropolis of horse-lines, which makes you think that a mammoth circus has arrived. Then you come to plank roads and little light railways, running out like veins across the mud. Far away there's a ridge and a row of charred trees, which stand out gloomily etched against the sky. The sky is grey and damp and sickly; ...
— The Glory of the Trenches • Coningsby Dawson
... should throw my geological outlines aside, and take up Turner's vignette of the Alps at Daybreak. After what has been said, a single glance at it will be enough. Observe the exquisite decision with which the edge of the uppermost plank of the great peak is indicated by its clear dark side and sharp shadow; then the rise of the second low ridge on its side, only to descend again precisely in the same line; the two fissures of this peak, one pointing to its summit, the other rigidly parallel to the great slope which ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... shouted. "An ould widda lives there with her gel." At the summit of the hill, just under South Barrule, with Cronk-ny-arrey-Lhaa to the west, I came upon a disused lead mine, called the old Cross Vein, its shaft open save for a plank or two thrown across it, and filled with water almost to the surface of the ground. And there, under the lee of the roofless walls of the ruined engine-house, stood the tiny one-story cottage where I had been directed to inquire my way again. I knocked, ...
— The Little Manx Nation - 1891 • Hall Caine
... Dick set to work and old Jerry helped him. It was no easy matter to shift the heavy planking, but after a while they got one plank up and then used this as a pry to bring ...
— The Rover Boys on Land and Sea - The Crusoes of Seven Islands • Arthur M. Winfield
... adjoining room—what vivid, disjointed cameos they were! If there was such a thing as Fate, what meaning could there be in their having met? Or was their meeting as purposeless as that of which some poet had once written—two pieces of plank-wood touching in mid-ocean and ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... when he asked what Andrew Jackson would have thought of Cleveland, and they laughed again when he declared the Democrats wanted to reduce the revenue, but didn't know how. He read them the tariff plank in the Confederate platform, and they laughed to see how it agreed with the same plank in the Democratic platform. From discussion of the incapacity of the Democrats to deal with the tariff question, from their very construction of the constitution, the Senator passed to the labor question, ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... shore." The whole ship had begun to throb ere this, and its great wheels to beat the water, and the chimneys had flung out their black signals for sailing. We were as yet close on the dock, and we saw Clive coming up from below, looking very pale; the plank was drawn after him ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... between England and anarchy. But Milton might have been expected to manifest some compunction at the disappointment of his own brilliant hopes, and some alarm at the condition of the vessel of the State reduced to her last plank. Authority actually had come into the hands of the kingliest man in England, valiant and prudent, magnanimous and merciful. But Cromwell's life was precarious, and what after Cromwell? Was the ancient constitution, with its halo of antiquity, its settled methods, and its ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... very fast in Baldinsville, as nothin but a plank road runs in there twice a week, and that's very much out of repair. So my nabers wasn't much posted up in regard to the wars. 'Squire Baxter sed he'd voted the dimicratic ticket for goin on forty ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 2 • Charles Farrar Browne
... you pay attention?" said the rough voice of a workman, carrying a plank on his shoulder. The man passed on. He was the voice of Providence saying to the watcher: "What are you meddling with? Think of your own duty; and leave these Parisians ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... strong in moral forces, so sure of a faction in the state—of a faction of the best, which would cleave the state to the centre, which would resist with the zealot's fire unto blood and desperation the unholy innovation—that would stand on the last plank of the wrecked order, and wade through seas of slaughter to restore it; the prospect of untried political innovation, under such circumstances, did not present itself to this Poet's imagination in a form so absolutely alluring, as it might have done to a ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... passed and all promised well. They contrived many traps for the capture of fur-bearing animals, and to catch turkeys and other game for food. Chief of their traps was the dead-fall, made by propping up one end of a short piece of puncheon or hewed plank, in such a way that it would fall upon the animal which attempted to secure the bait placed on a trigger beneath it. This trigger was a part of the prop under the puncheon and gave way at the slightest jar. As the plank fell it caught the creature which had disturbed it, and being weighted ...
— Far Past the Frontier • James A. Braden
... beneath the waves. Horrified as I was, there was no time to lose in thinking of the circumstance, as I had to look round to see if there was anybody else to whom we could render assistance. I caught sight of another person struggling in the water. He was trying to get hold of a plank, but was evidently no swimmer, and I thought he would sink before we could get up to him. I urged the boat's crew to pull as fast as they could, as did the officer in command. Just before we got up to the struggling ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... was awakened in that city of antiquaries. I went from shop to shop, crossing in two strides the rotten four plank bridges thrown over the nauseous current ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... plank in the Chicago platform to which I will call the attention of my Republican friends. It must not be forgotten. I read from a genuine copy which I ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... between her sobs that she was not a slave, that she would run away and find happiness wherever it offered. In short she was so insubordinate that Herse lost patience and scolded her severely. The girl sprang up, flung on a handkerchief and in a moment would have crossed the plank to the shore; Karnis, however, held ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... enough to contain the few articles of furniture absolutely required. Its walls were of unplaned plank occasionally failing to meet, and the only covering to the floor was a dingy strip of rag-carpet. The bed was a cot, shapeless, and propped up on one side by the iron leg of some veranda bench, while the open window looked out into the street. There was a bolt, not appearing particularly ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... inactivity, I carried my knapsack down to the river and put it into the Otter's smallest boat, which he called the perissoire, although it was not really a canoe. He was the chief builder of it, and as a contrivance for bringing home to man the solemn truth that life hangs to a thread or floats upon a plank—perhaps the worst state of the two—it certainly did him infinite credit. It was a flatbottomed outrigged deal boat, very long, and so narrow that to look over one's shoulder in it was a manoeuvre of extreme ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... the night, he carried no lantern. The main garrison was well lighted by lamps, and the road circling the old fort was broad, smooth, and bordered by a stone coping wall where it skirted the precipitous descent into the river-bottom. As he passed down the plank walk west of the quadrangle wherein lay the old barracks and the stone quarters of the commanding officer and the low one-storied row of bachelor dens, he could not help noting the silence and peace of the night. Not a light was visible at any window as he ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... and lay it on the heap with the others; but the moment I had raised the end next the other bars, it flew out of my hand with such violence, against the head of the ship, and with such a noise, as greatly surprised me, and put me in fear it had broke through the plank. ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... built neatly of reeds, with a verandah on all the four sides. There were three rooms in it. The one in the middle was the living-room, and had two rough tables and a few stools in it. The other two were the bedrooms for the white men. Each had a bedstead and a mosquito net for all furniture. The plank floor was littered with the belongings of the white men; open half-empty boxes, torn wearing apparel, old boots; all the things dirty, and all the things broken, that accumulate mysteriously round untidy men. There was also another dwelling-place ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... let me in, for God's sake; Molly, open the door," he cried, as he ran to the threshold, and leant his back against the plank. His pursuer confronted him upon the road; the pipe was no longer in his mouth, but the dusky red glow still lingered round him. He uttered some inarticulate cavernous sounds, which were wolfish and indescribable, while he seemed ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... Marie timidly of Father De Smet as he was about to draw in the plank. "The babies are both asleep and ...
— The Belgian Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... the lee braces and square the yards. Look sharp, now, lads. If that blackguard gets hold of us ye'll have to walk the plank, every man ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... rivulet, which they had to cross, and as a plank which served for a bridge over it was rather narrow, Susan was afraid to trust the old blind man to his little conductor; she therefore went on the tottering plank first herself, and then led the old harper carefully over. They were now come to a gate, which opened ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... Sancho; "but to fancy I'm going to mount him, either in the saddle or on the croup, is to ask pears of the elm tree. A good joke indeed! I can hardly keep my seat upon Dapple, and on a pack-saddle softer than silk itself, and here they'd have me hold on upon haunches of plank without pad or cushion of any sort! Gad, I have no notion of bruising myself to get rid of anyone's beard; let each one shave himself as best he can; I'm not going to accompany my master on any such long journey; besides, I can't give any help ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... sleds after the manner of the country. They are made of a single plank turned up at one end like a fiddle head, and the baggage is lashed on in bags and sacks. Two other Indians arrived from the woods. Engaged ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: Explorers • Various
... walk the plank! The super won't forgive a single man who is caught at the royal pastime of hazing! I'm going to write, now, for the money to get home with. You know, in the last two affairs, the hazers have been dismissed ...
— Dave Darrin's Third Year at Annapolis - Leaders of the Second Class Midshipmen • H. Irving Hancock
... distinguish clearly between the woodcut and the wood engraving, not only because early writers used these terms interchangeably, but also to determine exactly what Bewick contributed technically. The woodcut began with a drawing in pen-and-ink on the plank surface of a smooth-grained wood such as pear, serviceberry, or box. The woodcutter, using knife, gouges, and chisels, then lowered the wood surrounding the lines to allow the original drawing, unaltered, to be isolated in relief (see fig. 1). Thus the block, when inked and printed, produced ...
— Why Bewick Succeeded - A Note in the History of Wood Engraving • Jacob Kainen
... way to make a ship not possible to be sunk, though shot at an hundred times between wood and water by cannon, and should she lose a whole plank, yet, in half an hour's time, should be made to sail as fit ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... solitary rambles back in the pine woods, intersected by plank walks that made promenading possible. People liked to wander through there in the evenings, when the camp-lights in the hollows lent a mysterious charm, and on up to the big Knight Templar's Building, erected on the highest point of the sandy bluff overlooking Lake Michigan. Every ...
— The Making of Mary • Jean Forsyth
... When you see me standing helpless on a plank above a whirlpool, Do I drown, or do I hear you when you say it? Make believe? How much more am I to say or do for you before I tell you That I met him! What's to follow now may be for you to choose. Do you hear me? Won't you listen? It's an easy thing ...
— The Three Taverns • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... shipwreck; how when coming in Peter's boat from the opposite shores the wind had risen, carrying the lake in showers over the boat till all were wetted to their skins. But, unmindful of these showers, Jesus had continued his teaching, even after a great wave wrenched away a plank or part of one. Master, if the boat be not staunched we perish, Peter said, for which Jesus rebuked Peter and called them all to come forward and kneel closer about him. Kneel, he said, your faces towards me, and forget the plank and remember your ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... the second day out of Barbadoes, Mr. Watts breathed his last. By the light of the lanterns, his cold form was placed on a plank extended over the rail. Mollie would not permit him to be buried in his watery grave without a prayer, and Captain McClintock read one. Many tears were shed over him, as his body slid off into the sea. Noddy and Mollie wept ...
— Work and Win - or, Noddy Newman on a Cruise • Oliver Optic
... 12th October, we got the James hove down on the other side to the keel, and on this side we found four very dangerous places, where the main plank was eaten quite through by the worms. Into each of these we graved a piece of plank, and in one of them we drove a trunnel where none had been before. We also nailed a piece of lead on the end of the bolt, which had been formerly driven through ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... said Sandy, with a lordly air. They shook hands with Younkins once more, this time with more fervor than ever. Then the three lads filed on board the steamboat. The gang-plank was hauled in, put out again for the last tardy passenger, once more taken aboard, and then the stanch steamer "New Lucy" was on her way ...
— The Boy Settlers - A Story of Early Times in Kansas • Noah Brooks
... reply, clung to her hand, making a sign with her head that nothing in the world should part her from her mistress. Then all who had accompanied the queen renewed their entreaties that she should not persist in this fatal resolve, and when she was already a third of the way along the plank placed for her to enter the skiff, the Prior of Dundrennan, who had offered Mary Stuart such dangerous and touching hospitality, entered the water up to his knees, to try to detain her; but all was useless: the queen had made up ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... mud-bank, at the junction of the two branches of the Pantai, rotted in the rain, warped in the sun, fell to pieces and gradually vanished into the smoke of household fires of the settlement. Only a forgotten plank and a rib or two, sticking neglected in the shiny ooze for a long time, served to remind Babalatchi during many months that he was a ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... down upon the ship in an eternity of troubled water, onward she comes, with dim lights burning in her hull, and people there, asleep; as if no deadly element were peering in at every seam and chink, and no drowned seaman's grave, with but a plank to cover it, were yawning in ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... sailing o'er sea. Oh! but we went merrily! We forded the river, and clomb the high hill, Never our steeds for a day stood still; Whether we lay in the cave or the shed, Our sleep fell soft on the hardest bed; Whether we couch'd in our rough capote, On the rougher plank of our gliding boat, Or stretch'd on the beach, or our saddles spread As a pillow beneath the resting head, Fresh we woke upon the morrow: All our thoughts and words had scope, We had health, and we had hope, Toil and travel, but no sorrow. ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... myself that I desire increase, profit, and exaltation of body, mind, and soul. The surroundings, the clothes, the dwelling, the social status, the circumstances are to me utterly indifferent. Let the floor of the room be bare, let the furniture be a plank table, the bed a mere pallet. Let the house be plain and simple, but in the midst of air and light. These are enough—a cave would be enough; in a warmer climate the open air would suffice. Let me be furnished in myself with health, safety, ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies
... truncheon of authority never makes itself disagreeably felt, because one is so close to those who wield it,—we, therefore, sectaries of the god Mephistopheles, have engaged to whitewash the public mind, to give fresh costumes to the actors, to put a new plank or two in the government booth, to doctor doctrinaires, and warm up old Republicans, to touch up the Bonapartists a bit, and revictual the Centre; provided that we are allowed to laugh in petto at both kings and peoples, to think one thing in the morning ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... voice had been raised, save the invariable call of the sentries, passing from post to post the half hours of the night; but the stir at the guard-house, the bustle over at the barracks, the swift footsteps of sergeants or orderlies on the plank walk or resounding wooden galleries, speedily roused first one sleeper, then another, and blinds began to fly open along the second floor fronts, and white-robed forms to appear at the windows, and inquiring voices, male and female, hailed the passerby with "What's the matter, sergeant?" ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... aft, life's craft undone! Crank plank, split spritsail—mark, sea's lark! That grey cold sea's old sprees, begun When men lay dark i' the ark, no spark, All ...
— The Heptalogia • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... continued seven years with their master or mistress in Lewisham; with numerous other bequests. He further left moneys for the preservation of his father's, grandfather's, his wife's, and his own monument—his own being an oaken plank oiled, and a stone 'a foot square every way, and three feet long.' The stone and plank were removed many years ago, and an inscribed tablet has been set into the outer wall ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various
... height, consequently a man who could rest his elbow upon it must be at least six feet high. The mark of his hand proves that I am not mistaken. On seeing that he had brushed away the snow which covered the plank, I asked myself what he had used; I thought that it might be his cap, and the mark left by the peak proves that I was right. Finally, if I have discovered the color and the material of his overcoat, it is only because ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... in a contract for building a ship at Newburyport in 1141, by which the owners were bound to pay "L300 in cash, L300 by orders on good shops in Boston; two-thirds money; four hundred pounds by orders up the river for tim'r and plank, ten bbls. flour, 50 pounds weight of loaf sugar, one bagg of cotton wool, one hund. bushels of corn in the spring; one hhd. of Rum, one hundred weight of cheese * * * whole am't of price for ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... men are at the opposite ends of a plank that is balanced, and if they are of equal weight, and if one of them wants to make a leap into the air, then his leap will be made down from his end of the plank and the man will never go up again but must remain in his ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... Valois. Admitted that the exclusion of women from the monarchy was already established by two precedents, could it not be plausibly argued that a woman, incapable herself of reigning, might form "the bridge and plank"[1] (as a contemporary put it) by which her sons might step into the rights of their ancestors? Strange as such a conception seems to our ideas, it was not unfamiliar to the jurists of that day. It was in this fashion that ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... short length of candle, still burning, in it; the lantern being cunningly draped in red bunting to represent the appearance of a lamp shining through a curtain. And the whole contrivance was rendered self-steering by the attachment of a few fathoms of line to the after-end of the middle plank, at the other extremity of which a drogue, consisting of a short length of plank, was attached. This drogue had the effect of keeping the raft running dead before the wind, and it travelled at a very respectable pace, too—quite five knots an hour, ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... another are often marked with a real and permanent exaltation of the whole character. But it does not follow that certain religious beliefs and ordinances are in themselves just, because they thus touch the great heroic master-chord of the human soul. To wear sackcloth and sleep on a plank may have been of use to many souls, as symbolizing the awakening of this higher nature; but, still, the religion of the New Testament is plainly one which calls to no such outward ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Tomorrow by the end of the day we shall come to a mountain of black stone, highs the Magnet Mountain;[FN257] for thither the currents carry us willy-nilly. As soon as we are under its lea, the ship's sides will open and every nail in plank will fly out and cleave fast to the mountain; for that Almighty Allah hath gifted the loadstone with a mysterious virtue and a love for iron, by reason whereof all which is iron travelleth towards it; and on this mountain is much iron, how much none knoweth save the Most High, from ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... minute in such a sea as this, so there's no use thinking about it," answered Jack. "I have tried to persuade myself that it might be possible, but I know it is not. All we can hope is that should she go down, poor Alick may manage to get hold of a plank or spar, or into one of the boats, and that when the gale moderates we may pick him up. There is but a poor chance of ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... older ones play at Fox and Geese," said Angelo; "and look, here is a plank! We will put it over this great stone and I will play at seesaw with the ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... boat, being afloat, rises and falls with the river; and thus the end of the platform which rests upon it is kept always at the proper level for the landing of the passengers, so that, whatever may be the state of the water, they go over on a level plank. This is a very convenient arrangement for such a river as the Rhine, which rises and falls considerably at different seasons, on account of the variation in the quantity of rain, and in the melting of the snows, on the mountains ...
— Rollo on the Rhine • Jacob Abbott
... products from the interior. In discharging these boats with fuel the serfs[4] make use of a sort of truck with a framework to hold the billets, and the wheels, being not more than six or seven inches in diameter, require a narrow plank to be laid across the street a little below the uneven pavement. They have also a very defective mode of watering the streets; fetching the water in buckets and putting it into a larger vessel upon wheels from which ...
— A Journey in Russia in 1858 • Robert Heywood
... Moreover, he was so incessant in his urging the King to make an alliance with the Catholic Emperor that at last, about the time that Norfolk came back from France, the King was mightily enraged, so that he struck the Bishop of Winchester in the face, and swore that his friend the Kaiser was a rotten plank, since he could not rid himself of a few small knaves ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... them up; and at last this great performance was completed, much to the admiration of all, and much to his own satisfaction. Indeed, when it is recollected that Humphrey had only the hand-saw and ax, and that he had to cut down the tree; and then to saw it into plank, it must be acknowledged that it required great patience and perseverance even to make a wheelbarrow; but Humphrey was not only persevering, but was full of invention. He had built up a hen-house with ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... fast," he said. "All we need is a little luck. If we ain't got that there's no use of worryin'. We can't blast ourselves out o' this without riskin' the schooner. We ought to be thankful we froze in gentle. There ain't a plank started. The floe'll fend us off. There ain't enny big chunks enny way near us aft. Luck—to make a decent landin'—is all we need, an' it's my hunch it's ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... would take that ship home where he lived and keep it there carefully, expecting the owners to come for it, but they never did. And he would try to get the idleness and sloth out of the sailors of that ship by compelling them to take invigorating exercise and a bath. He called it "walking a plank." All the pupils liked it. At any rate, they never found any fault with it after trying it. When the owners were late coming for their ships, the Admiral always burned them, so that the insurance money should ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... an Indian hunters' lodge, chiefly made from yellow cedar plank, at the month of a small stream on a little bay on ...
— Official report of the exploration of the Queen Charlotte Islands - for the government of British Columbia • Newton H. Chittenden
... a couple drew aside and sat down a moment to rest. But soon they were back on the floor again, whirling and laughing and stamping their feet, and raising clouds of dust from the rough plank floors to ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... almost to madness by their devilish cruelties, dragged them to a sawpit, where pieces of square timber, which had been partially cut into planks for building purposes, lay. The unhappy pair were then bound on two separate planks, then another plank was placed on the top of each, and tightly bound together with strips of fine bamboo; the monsters laughing and gesticulating at what they termed the living sandwiches, dainty morsels to be offered ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest
... of lilacs stands at A. At B is a vine-covered screen, serving as a hammock support. The lawn made and the planting done, it was next necessary to lay the walks. These are wholly informal affairs, made by sinking a plank ten inches wide into the ground to a level with the sod. The border plantings of this yard are too straight and regular for the most artistic results, but such was necessary in order not to encroach upon the central space. Yet the reader will no doubt agree that this yard is much better than it ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... watering places, but what does Wilbur do but sidestep the ferry proposition and we go prancing up to a dock where a boat about nine miles big was hitched and before I had time to give the office to the cop on the beat Wilbur rushes me up the plank and into the outfit. Honest, it was bigger than any of the Coney Island boats. I was under the impression for the nonce that it was the night boat up the Hudson but I didn't see a ...
— The Sorrows of a Show Girl • Kenneth McGaffey
... well tell the truth while I write of it. I know that if the dead can rise from their graves I shall re-visit the Chain Pier at Brighton. I spent one hour there—that was the hour of my life—one madly happy, bewildering hour! I remember the plank of wood on which my feet rested; I remember the railing, over which I heard the green, deep water, with the white-sailed boat in the distance—sails like the white wings of angels beckoning me away; the blue sky with the few fleecy white clouds—the wash of the waters against the woodwork ...
— The Tragedy of the Chain Pier - Everyday Life Library No. 3 • Charlotte M. Braeme
... him up to the store, Bill, if you're ready? It looks a nice cool place. And while you're prizin' him open, I'd best explain to his Reverence and the barber. Here, unship the shore-plank; and you, A. Grigg and Son, lend a hand to heave. . . . Aye, you're right: it weighs more'n a trifle—bein' a quarter-puncheon, an' the best proof-spirits. Tilt her this way, . . . Ready? . . . then w'y-ho! and away ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... A plank walk from the hotel to the station elevates the foot-passenger in Corry above the mud of the streets, through whose depths flounders a crowd of wagons laden with crude oil for the refinery, with refined oil for the freight-trains, with carboys of chemicals, with merchandise, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... is justice, beyond all question, neither to commit murder nor robbery. What, then, would your just man do, if, in a case of shipwreck, he saw a weaker man than himself get possession of a plank? Would he not thrust him off, get hold of the timber himself, and escape by his exertions, especially as no human witness could be present in the mid-sea? If he acted like a wise man of the world, he would certainly do so, for to act in any other way would cost him ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... Miss Unity's reflections were checked. Lifting her eyes she saw at the end of the narrow path a low shed which looked like a pig-sty; by it was a plank, raised at each end on a stone, so as to form a rough bench, and on this there crouched a small disconsolate figure. It was bent nearly double, and had its face buried in its hands, so that only a rough ...
— The Hawthorns - A Story about Children • Amy Walton
... on the ground and Anselmo drew from a hole a package wrapped in sail cloth. "Here, take this package," the ex-priest told his companion, "and give it to me as soon as I am in the water. Do you see the plank which our little pet gnawed through? Well, it can be shoved aside, and by that way we come to a cave where instruments and nails are kept. In this cave is a door, to which I have the key which locks it. Now pay attention; I am turning the key. Forward, in ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... spirit to carry it off, and in the next place the motion of his limbs will disgrace the ornaments they bear. "And so best," most Englishmen will say. Very likely; and, therefore, let no Englishman try it. But my Spaniard did not look at like a hog in armour. He walked slowly down the plank into the boat, whistling lowly but very clearly a few bars from a opera tune. It was plain to see that he was master of himself, of his ornaments, and of his limbs. He had no appearance of thinking that men were looking at him, or of feeling that he was beauteous in his attire;—nothing ...
— John Bull on the Guadalquivir from Tales from all Countries • Anthony Trollope
... And four of them did take the plank, As light as it had been a flea, And carried it to the New Castle, Where as John ...
— Ballads of Scottish Tradition and Romance - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Third Series • Various
... Death-shadow," said Atli again. "Up with them, lads—see, yonder lies a plank—and away to the hall. I will give twenty in silver to each of you if Eric lives," and he unclasped his cloak and threw it over both ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard
... engine which the tempest cold Had saved from burning with his friendly blast, Approached had so near the battered hold That on the walls her bridge at ease she cast: But Solyman ran thither fierce and bold, To cut the plank whereon the Christians passed. And had performed his will, save that upreared High in the skies a ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... Friday remained on the shore all night. They watched to see if they could not help some poor sailor that might cling to a plank and be blown on shore. They saw ...
— An American Robinson Crusoe - for American Boys and Girls • Samuel. B. Allison
... plan was not so very long in becoming known over the entire city; a bridge had been crossed, and every plank taken up and destroyed; thence the ways into new families were ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey
... and cut a hole in the plank underneath. The sugar house stood on a foundation of stone which raised the floor four feet above the ground, and gave us sufficient room to work, and to convey away the ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... went on, feeling his way. He reached a high plank fence and sensing it with his fingers, he lay down, resting his ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... 'tis precious little that ever bothers him. The fellow is a Puritan preacher—of the same breed as the Huguenots—and possesses a head as hard as an oaken plank." ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... crew of the brig Terrible lost all their provisions, except a quantity of candles. After these were gone, they took a plank out of the side of the vessel and sliced it, which was their board for ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 18, 1841 • Various
... rotted almost out of the semblance of humanity. The survivors were hoisted as carefully as possible on board the frigate; and then, as the best means we could think of for disposing of the boat and her dreadful freight, half a dozen eighteen-pound shot were passed down into her, a plank knocked out of her bottom, and she was left to sink, which she did before the frigate had sailed many yards from ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... went together into an inner room, and Andrew moved aside a heavy chest of drawers which stood against the wall. Then he lifted a short plank beneath them, and putting his arm far under the flooring, he pulled forth ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... higher we should have had the clouds below us, as they are on Penang Hill. The path up the mountain—if path it can be called—is almost a staircase of tumbled rocks, and requires both strength and agility to climb. It was quite beyond me; but I was carried on a man's back, sitting on a bit of plank, with a strip of cloth fastened round my waist and across the man's forehead, my back to his back. The Dyaks are famous mountaineers, their bare feet cling to the stones, or notched trunks of trees thrown from one ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... northeast corner of my vineyard in central North Carolina, and fronting on the Lumberton plank-road, there stood a small frame house, of the simplest construction. It was built of pine lumber, and contained but one room, to which one window gave light and one door admission. Its weather-beaten sides revealed a virgin innocence of paint. Against one end of the house, and occupying half ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... if I have to climb up to the roof, and knock a plank off. Say, those fellows must have been spying out here when I met them ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren
... one pay any attention to her. A Mexican jabbered at her, showing his white teeth, flashing his sloe-black eyes. Young miners eyed her curiously, and some of them spoke. She met all kinds of men along the plank walk, most of whom passed by, apparently unobserving. She obeyed Kells to the letter. But for some reason she was unable to explain, when she got to the row of saloons, where lounging, evil-eyed rowdies accosted her, she found ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... They won't put up wi' no airs like he've a-give'd me. Yu've got to du what yu'm told, sharp, an' yu mustn't luke [look] what yu thinks, let 'lone say it, or else yu'll find yourself in chokey [cells] 'fore yu knows where yu are. 'Tis like walking on a six-inch plank, in the Navy, full o' rules an' regylations; an' he won't get fed like he was at home nuther, when us ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... pushed heavily against the planks, and felt that one of them yielded. Then, standing back, he dealt a heavy blow on the spot with his clenched fist; a second, and the plank broke in. He put his arm through the aperture, and easily slipped the bolt back, and the door flew open. The blood ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... a gang-plank was run across from the broad flat stern of the nomarch's boat to the prow of Senci's, a carpet was spread on it, and Ta-meri, with little shrieks and tottering steps, came across it. Kenkenes put out his arms to her and lifted her down when ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... up on the opposite side of the room before a plank. To each is given a hammer and six or eight nails. They race to see who first can drive the nails into the plank without bending ...
— School, Church, and Home Games • George O. Draper
... matter of course, Toppin was swinging his arms preparatory to jumping into the shallow end, when, seeing Simmons skipping along the plank that led to the diving-board, in the part where the water was marked "5 ft.", he paused to watch. Simmons raised his hands above his head, curved ...
— Jack of Both Sides - The Story of a School War • Florence Coombe
... exhausting voyage, a plank started in the mate's boat, and it was with difficulty that they heeled it over in the water, at the risk of their lives, to get to the place and nail it up. One night the captain's boat was attacked by a species of fish known as ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... not admire the ultimate island whither his destiny will cast him? Giacomo Cenci, whom the Pope ordered to be flayed alive, no doubt admired the romance of destiny that laid him on his ultimate island, a raised plank, so that the executioner might conveniently roll up the skin of his belly like an apron. And a hare that I once saw beating a tambourine in Regent Street looked at me so wistfully that I am sure it admired in some remote way the romance of destiny that had taken it from ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... forecastle. After a while I thought I heard something fall overboard, when I ran on to the deck, but could not see anything. I listened with bated breath, but not a sound could I hear; at length I shouted, but there was no answer. A plank had been put from the 'Ann Scarborough,' into our 'Taffelrail,' and as this plank had fallen down, I thought it was its fall I had heard and nothing else. I got a boat hook and pulled the plank on board our vessel. But after a few moments I ...
— The Hero of the Humber - or the History of the Late Mr. John Ellerthorpe • Henry Woodcock
... street under guard, Bishop "had given a look toward the great and spacious meeting-house of Salem, and immediately a daemon, invisibly entering the house, tore down a part of it." It may be guessed that a plank or a partition had given way under the pressure of the crowd of lookers-on collected for so ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Vol. II - The Planting Of The First Colonies: 1562—1733 • Various
... was a man named Kobylin, a man of great strength. He boasted that he had committed ten murders, and was always bullying and tyrannizing the quieter and weaker prisoners. One day he passed where Luka and Godfrey were sitting on the edge of the plank bed talking together. Luka happened to get up just as he came along, and Kobylin gave him a violent push, saying, "Get out of the way, you miserable little ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... some ordeal lay before him; but no one would tell him in what it consisted. He was led now into an outer room by two solemn brothers. Through the plank partition he could hear the murmur of many voices from the assembly within. Once or twice he caught the sound of his own name, and he knew that they were discussing his candidacy. Then there entered an inner guard with a green and gold ...
— The Valley of Fear • Arthur Conan Doyle
... a plank, with two elects, slanting down from the scuttle, which was a mere hole in the deck. There being no slide to draw over in case of emergency, the tarpaulin temporarily placed there was little protection from the spray heaved over the bows; so that in anything of a breeze the place ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... picture—I wonder if any of you have ever seen it?—in which a little child is seen walking across a narrow plank which bridges a deep chasm, while behind flies a tall, beautiful angel, with a hand on either side the child, guiding it along. The child does not see the angel, and walks fearlessly; but the heavenly hands are there, and the little ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... the wreck in eighteen feet depth of water. Two good divers worked for about two hours, and recovered three muskets and several copper cooking pots belonging to the soldiers. The story of the reis (captain) is, that she sprang a plank at about 4 A.M., six days ago, while under sail with a light wind, and she filled and sank immediately, the men having barely time to save themselves. Unfortunately, she had on board, in addition to one hundred urdeps of corn (450 bushels), a section of one of Samuda's steel lifeboats; this was ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... bees In springtime when the Sun with Taurus rides, Pour forth their populous youth about the hive In clusters; they among fresh dews and flowers Fly to and fro, or on the smoothed plank The suburb of their straw-built citadel New rubbed with balm, expatiate and ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... devoted much space to the advocacy of Responsible Government, which for many years constituted the main plank in the Liberal platform. He pointed out the injustice and absurdity of the existing state of things, where the people were beguiled with a mockery of representation in Parliament without having any voice in the nomination ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... Then Doc Sulloway come out and told some funny anecdotes about two Irishmen named Pat and Mike, lately landed in this country and looking for work, and imitated two cats in a backyard, and drawing a glass of soda water, and sawing a plank in two; and winding up with the announcement that he had donated a dozen bottles of the great Indian Snake Oil Remedy for man and beast that had been imparted to him in secret by old Rumpatunk, the celebrated medicine man, who is supposed to have had it from the Great Spirit; ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... with low-ceilinged cabins built upon them—sometimes of one room, sometimes of half a dozen, and varying in character from a mere shanty to a well-appointed cottage. Perhaps the greater number of these craft are afloat in the river, and moored to the bank, with a gang-plank running to shore; others are "beached," having found a comfortable nook in some higher stage of water, and been fastened there, propped level with timbers and driftwood. Among the houseboat folk are young working couples starting out in life, and hoping ultimately to gain a foothold on land; unfortunate ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... constituents. Then came an immense popular demonstration on the Place de la Bastille, where there were red flags, incendiary speeches and a crowd that overflowed the square, the affair ending with the murder of a poor inoffensive agent of police, who was bound to a plank, thrown into the canal, and then stoned to death. And forty-eight hours later, during the night of the 26th of February, Maurice, awakened by the beating of the long roll and the sound of the tocsin, beheld bands of men ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... fourteen and eighteen, and from the most refined and opulent families, were beheaded. The group of youth and innocence stood clustered at the foot of the scaffold, while, one by one, their companions ascended, were bound to the plank, the ax fell, and their heads dropped into the basket. It seems that there must have been some supernatural power of support to have sustained children under so awful an ordeal. There were no faintings, no loud lamentations, no shrieks of despair. With the ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... our outfit," said Jeff, as they hurried over the plank to the landing. "But where ...
— Klondike Nuggets - and How Two Boys Secured Them • E. S. Ellis
... own affairs, blissfully ignorant that this tub was, within forty-eight hours, to cost him fifty gold. What had shifted his casual interest was the visible prospect of a party of three who were coming down the packet gang-plank. The trio exhibited that indecisive air with which Ah Cum was tolerably familiar. They were looking for a guide. Forthwith he ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... light fiddle string, served with waxed silk at the trigger catch; if this be omitted the gut gets worn through very quickly. In order to decide how far it is permissible to bend the bow, the quickest way is to make a rough experiment on a bit of the same plank from which the bow is to be cut, and then to allow a small factor of safety. In the figure the bow is of lance-wood and is more bent than ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall
... Girl, sits crouched over her knees on a stile close to a river. A MAN with a silver badge stands beside her, clutching the worn top plank. THE GIRL'S level brows are drawn together; her eyes see her memories. THE MAN's eyes see THE GIRL; he has a dark, twisted face. The bright sun shines; the quiet river flows; the Cuckoo is calling; the mayflower is in bloom along the hedge that ends in ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Dog had got a piece of meat and was carrying it home in his mouth to eat it in peace. Now on his way home he had to cross a plank lying across a running brook. As he crossed, he looked down and saw his own shadow reflected in the water beneath. Thinking it was another dog with another piece of meat, he made up his mind to have that also. So he made a snap at the shadow in the ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... a town of blank shutters and empty streets when we got there this morning," he wrote, "but the French sappers had thrown a plank gangway across the gap in the ruined old bridge, built in A. D. 800, that had survived all the wars of France, only to perish at ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... about my head and roaring like any bull of Bashan, for my voice was always loud and carried far. When they saw the bright sword whirling through the air and heard these bellowings, uttering cries of fear, those poor folk fled. Indeed most of them fell from the plank into the mud, where one stuck fast and was like to drown, had not Kari rescued him, which his brethren were in too great ...
— The Virgin of the Sun • H. R. Haggard
... about her precious son going to turn the whole United States out after you because you wouldn't help him pull the plank out ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... a particular description of floor, which, although not altogether fire-proof, is certainly (at least so far as I can judge), almost practically so for dwelling-houses. It is composed simply of plank two and a-half or three inches thick, so closely joined, and so nicely fitted to the walls, as to be completely air-tight. Its thickness and its property of being air-tight, will be easily observed to be its only causes of ...
— Fire Prevention and Fire Extinction • James Braidwood
... I reckon I'll fetch it. It's up-hill part of the way and he may lose his wind, for it's a good half-mile. You must make a row with him at the gang-plank, er do somethin' to kinder hold him back. The wind's down stream to-day and the boat's shore to swing in a little aft. I'll jump for it and you ...
— The Hoosier School-boy • Edward Eggleston
... filth and squalor. All are built on the same plan. There is one guest-room, a bare carpetless apartment, with a rough wooden bench, a table, and two straight-backed wooden chairs, and the room is heated to suffocation by a huge stove, which occupies a corner of the room. The flimsy plank partition is unpapered, but generally plastered with the cheap, crudely coloured prints sold by pedlars. Some of these depicted events connected with our recent war in South Africa, and it is needless to add that the ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... a criminal by a trifle like that, or he would not have been up to the Mounted Police standard in resource and inventive capacity. So, as the river was impassable in the ordinary way, Clisby commandeered a railway hand-car, and possibly nailed an extra plank or two upon it. Then he got his troop-horse to climb up and stand upon it, while this strong-armed constable took hold of the "pump-handle" and worked his way across the trestle railway bridge many ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... is over fifty it is quite done. Is it not so, Monsieur?"—this made with a little deferential wave of his hand. I noted the tribute to the staid painter, and nodded approvingly. He was evidently climbing up to my level. Perhaps this plank, slender as it was, might take him out of the slough and land him on ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... filing the saw. When Sparks swam away and left me, Gipson saw they were going to let me drown, and ran to my assistance. He got on one of the large slabs, and came in to where I had gone down. I was still making some commotion in the water, and, guessing about where I was, he pushed a plank down that came just under my left arm. I knew what it was, and pressed it to my side. He then bore on the other end and brought me to the surface. He held on thus till others came and helped me upon the slab. As soon ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen
... up in sacks, heavily weighted at the feet, and taken to an opening in the side of the ship on the lower deck not far above the water line. A long plank tilted at one end served as the incline down which the weighted sacks slid into ...
— Sinking of the Titanic - and Great Sea Disasters • Various
... some towns, and even in some large cities, wherever sewers are not provided. In its primitive and unfortunately common form, the privy vault is nothing but a hole dug in the ground near or at some distance from the house; the hole is but a few feet deep, with a plank or rough seat over it, and an improvised shed over all. The privy is filled with the excreta; the liquids drain into the adjacent ground, which becomes saturated, and contaminates the nearest wells and water courses. ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume V (of VI) • Various
... frequented public schools, and to have had good teachers at home, and to know that on such things a man should spend liberally . . . From Diognetus . . . [I learned] to have become intimate with philosophy, . . . and to have written dialogues in my youth, and to have desired a plank bed and skin, and whatever else of the kind belongs to the Greek discipline. . . . From Rusticus I received the impression that my character required improvement and discipline;" and so on to the end of the chapter, near which, ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... spot, on a high embankment over standing water, the rail was gone, sunk probably. Here we tried our rails brought from the turn-out. They were too short. We supplemented with a length of plank from our stores. We rolled our cars carefully over. They passed safe. But Homans shook his head. He could not venture a locomotive on that frail stuff. So we lost the society of the "J.H. Nicholson." ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... boatmen should place a doubly thick plank for sliding the box on board, as it seemed probable, she said, that the usual one would break in two, and then the valuable books borrowed of Professor Erpenius would be damaged or destroyed. The request caused much further grumbling, but was complied with at last and the chest ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... and run for it, if I see a chance. At present I shall carry on till he comes up within range: and then, to keep the Company's canvas from being shot to rags, I shall shorten sail; and to save ship and cargo and all our lives, I shall fight while a plank of her swims. Better to be killed in hot blood than ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... true enough in a great degree. To my office, and there we sat and despatched much business. Home and dined with my wife well, and then up and made clean my closet of books, and had my chamber a third time made very clean, so that it is now in a very fine condition. Thence down to see some good plank in the river with Sir W. Batten and back again, it being a very cold day and a cold wind. Home again, and after seeing Sir W. Pen, to my office, and there till late doing of business, being mightily encouraged by every ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... only connive at his obstreperous Approbation, but very cheerfully repair at their own Cost whatever Damages he makes. They had once a Thought of erecting a kind of Wooden Anvil for his Use that should be made of a very sounding Plank, in order to render his Stroaks more deep and mellow; but as this might not have been distinguished from the Musick of a Kettle-Drum, the ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... run!" he said. And off they sped, slipped through the closing gates, and ran for the gang-plank, where their porter stood making frantic signs for them to hasten. It was a close connection, but they made it, to the unfeigned amusement ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... led directly to his place on the left hand of O'Brien, who was in the middle. The sight of his two brother-martyrs capped and pinioned, and with the fatal cord around each neck, seemed to unman the poor fellow utterly. He stumbled on touching an uneven plank on the scaffold, so that many thought he had fainted; but it was not so, though he unquestionably was labouring under intense agony of mind. O'Brien, firm and unshrinking to the last, turned and looked at him encouragingly, and to him ...
— The Dock and the Scaffold • Unknown
... acquainted with them, returned to the ship, for a plank, to enable him to cross over the chasm. He crossed it; but, on approaching them, they entreated that he would not touch them, as, in that case, they should certainly die. One of them, however, more courageous ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... days Theo was in no frame of mind to talk porcelain or any other serious subject, for his new crutches came, and after Dr. Swift had adjusted them the boy was like a bird freed from its cage. He could not, to be sure, go far from the house; but even to clump up and down the veranda and the plank walks that connected the cabins was a joy. How good it was to get about once more! But, alas, the pace at which the convalescent moved was a constant source of alarm to all who beheld it. Before the expiration ...
— The Story of Porcelain • Sara Ware Bassett
... raised to the sky cooler by one or more pumps worked by the mill, with a one, two, or three horse power, according to the length of the lever, and the diameter of the mill. Sky, or water coolers, in general, are square vessels, made of the best two inch pine plank, properly jointed, from twenty to twenty-five feet square, laid on strong joists sufficiently close, and trunneled down (after pressing) with wooden trunnels from end to end, to prevent starting or warping; the joists are supported by a couple of strong ...
— The American Practical Brewer and Tanner • Joseph Coppinger
... of wind, with showers of rain and hail, came ashore from the ship one cask of beef, with several of the lower-deck carlings, and plank of the upper and lower-deck beams, and, what was reckon'd very odd, the cabin-bell came ashore, without its being fasten'd to any wood, or any one thing of the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... in the angle, in making various articles. A small wheel barrow, a knife-and-fork basket, a clock-bracket and other easy things were made, one at a time. All boys, and indeed some girls, were allowed to help. One would saw off the end of a plank; another would rule a pencil line; the next would plane the plank down to that line; the next would bore the holes in it; the next would screw it into position; the next would sandpaper it The work went very slowly, but every one who would, had his share in it, while the rest sat and watched. ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... when you have learned the lesson of it and turned its discipline into service, the prison shall transform itself into a hermitage, the dungeon into a home; the burnt skilly shall be sweet in your mouth; and your rest on the plank-bed the dreamless slumber ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... long as he lay perfectly still there was nothing to fear, for the reptile's visit was neither inimical nor in search of food. It had evidently glided up the plank slope and through the gangway to escape from the chilling wet ground, then made its way into the cabin and found the young man's berth pleasantly attractive. But Oliver felt that the slightest movement on his part might incense the creature and rouse within it a feeling that it was ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... said his old friend, who had so scientifically cured him of his sea-sickness, and toward whom John evinced a kind of filial reverence, placing peculiar reliance upon every thing said by the worthy tar, "why, John, they will make us all walk the plank." ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... so he thought he would live, going down to the dangers of the sea, trading in strange ports, and transmuting hard, untiring effort into gain for her at home and her children, and he would grow old and grizzled, until he could no longer brace to a heeling plank or stand the responsibility of a ship's mastery, and then they would buy a little house on some harbor, while their sons went rolling down to Rio or fought the typhoon in the China Seas, and he could sit there with his telescope, ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... the cone and its contents on to a plank, the ends of which were held by my servant and myself, we walked to the footlights with our heavy burden, and upset it. The Moor had disappeared—the ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... at his impassive face with a strange, dull curiosity as she spoke of the future, as if wondering whether she had a future or had reached the end of her life—here, at this moment, in the little plank-walled office of the malgamite works. But her courage rose steadily. It is only afar off that Death is terrible. When we actually stand in his presence, we usually hold up our heads ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... platform put forth, I am very much more interested in the dynamics of it than in the rhetoric of it. I have a very practical mind, and I want to know who are going to do those things and how they are going to be done. If you have read the trust plank in that platform as often as I have read it, you have found it very long, but very tolerant. It did not anywhere condemn monopoly, except in words; its essential meaning was that the trusts have been bad and must be made to ...
— The New Freedom - A Call For the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People • Woodrow Wilson
... of a conversation in which Vanessa's native Jewish wit was beginning to tell against the more homely gifts of the rest of the party, Leonetta would suddenly fall back, stand in an attitude of rapt attention over a brook, a well, a wild flower, a plank bridge, a pool, or anything; and, at a signal from her, the three men of the party would quickly rally to her halting place, and enter heartily into whatever spirit the object contemplated was ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... wounded, all aloft. Her rigging and sails were a good deal cut, a shot had gone through the foremast, and the bowsprit was slightly damaged; the only shot that touched her hull merely glanced athwart her bows, indenting a plank beneath the cat-head. The Peacock's crew had amounted to 134, but 4 were absent in a prize, and but 122 [Footnote: Letter of Lieutenant F. W. Wright (of the Peacock), April 17, 1813.] fit for action; of these she lost her captain, and seven men killed and ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... person in sight was the employee of the steamboat company who caught the loop of the hawser thrown him, and dropped it over a pile. The rest of the men just raised their heads and stared, chewing reflectively on either tobacco or straws, until the plank was dropped and the deckhands began trundling the ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... caulked it into the seams with a sharpened gate-hinge. He notched a pine tree, gathered the gum and boiled it into pitch to make the joints tight. That extraordinary pair of oars he sawed, chopped, and whittled from an old plank. The spear is a family relic which he dug up and fitted with a white-ash pole, and the anchor is a long stone, tied by the slack of a clothes-line. The jack is a basket made of old pail-hoops, and fastened to an upright stick to hold the burning pine knot. Yet we wonder why it is always the country ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... one of these places. In one corner, on the ground, burns a fierce fire, surrounded by innumerable pots and pans, between which are wooden spits with beef and pork, simmering and roasting in the most enticing manner. An ungainly wooden framework, with a long broad plank on it, occupies the middle of the room, and is covered with a cloth whose original colour it would be an impossibility to determine. This is the table at which the guests sit. During the dinner itself the old patriarchal customs are observed, with ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... to talk business, en dey ain't gwine to be no mo' foolishness. In de fust place, you gits fifty dollahs a month; you's gwine to han' over half of it to yo' ma. Plank it out!" ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... thirty-four logs, good enough to float down a river, but sure to go to pieces when it gets into deep water; Let let them be embarked on board a goodly ship, well found, well fastened, well manned—in which every timber and plank has been so fashioned as to contribute to the beauty and strength of the whole fabric, with a good seaman at the helm, the Constitution in the binnacle, and the stars and stripes at the masthead. When the time of my departure shall come, let me ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... shelter of the breakwater, was old Hrolfur's boat, its mast already stepped, with the sail wrapped round it. It was a four- oared boat, rather bigger than usual, tarred all over except for the top plank, which was painted light blue. In the boat were the various bits of equipment needed for shark-fishing, including a thick wooden beam to which were attached four hooks of wrought iron, a keg of shark-bait which stank vilely, and barrels for the shark's liver. ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... out, the streets crossing each other at right angles, and generally of considerable length, and of convenient width. The majority of the houses are still nothing more than log cabins, but lately a great number of plank and brick houses have been erected. The chief edifices of Nauvoo are the temple, and an hotel, called the Nauvoo House, but neither of them is yet finished; the latter is of brick, upon a stone foundation, and presents a front of one hundred ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... do, I discovered that the crew had been ordered to paint the ship outside; as a pastime I put on old clothes and joined the painting party. Planks were hung round the ship by ropes being tied to each end of the plank; on these the men stood to do their work. We had not been employed there very long when there was a cry from the deck that the ship was surrounded by sharks. It seems that the butcher had killed a sheep, whose entrails, having been thrown overboard, attracted these fearful brutes round the ship ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... own. The planks were therefore placed on each other's edges, and sewed together with the tough cordage already mentioned. They were also thus sewed to the stem, the stern, and the keel. Each stitch or tie was six inches apart, and was formed thus: Three holes were bored in the upper plank and three in the lower—the holes being above each other, that is, in a vertical line. Through these holes the cord was passed, and, when tied, formed a powerful stitch of three-ply. Besides this, we placed between the edges of the planks layers of cocoa-nut fibre, which, as it swelled ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... There'll be a poor man standin' alongside that 'ain't had a chance to set down since he got out of bed before daylight, every bone in him achin'—stiff. There ain't no extra comfortable chairs pointed out to him. Lord, no! If there happens to be the soft side of a rock or a plank handy, he's welcome to take it; if there ain't, why let him keep his standin'; he's used to it. I tell ye, it's them that need to whom it should be given, and not them that's got it already. I tell ye, the need should always regulate ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... the way to a postern where, passing the moat on a single plank, they reached a small barbican, or exterior defense, which communicated with the open field by a ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... prodded the elephant with the sharp point of his hook. The act forced Jupiter to place one foot on the gang plank, throwing his weight upon the planking to test its stability. He felt it give ever so little beneath his feet, ...
— The Circus Boys On the Mississippi • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... landing distance of the northern bank, the soldiers who had been on guard at the head of the Pons AEmilius had regained their former station, and were running along the shore to cut off any attempt there to escape. Soon a whizzing javelin dug into the plank at Drusus's feet, and a second rushed over Caelius's head, and plashed into the water beyond the barge. Other soldiers on the now receding southern bank were piling into a light skiff to second their comrades' efforts by a direct attack on ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... help him. But if you think him weak and little suited for work, abandon him without pity. Remember this: two boards have fallen into the mud, one of them is worm-eaten, the other is sound. What are you going to do? Pay no attention to the worm-eaten plank, but take out the sound one and dry it in the sun. It may be of service to you or ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... as the entrance to the sea is usually called, there came up one of those sudden hurricanes known as a Southeaster, whose force nothing can withstand. The small craft was foundered, and Jack, after floating for a long time on a plank, finally drifted on to a ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... rotten plank had been thrown across from one bank to the other. The fugitive already had his foot upon it.... But it so happened that just there beside the river stood his best friend and ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... captain's permission, he invited them down to inspect his submarine. A plank from the lower grating of the gangway to the deck of the smaller craft was all that was needed, and along this they went, the girl ahead, supported by Mr. Foster, and Ross following, with a messenger boy from ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... more minutes of it before she reached a combination of bridge and culvert, with a plank platform above a big tile drain. With this solid plank bottom, she could stop. Silence came roaring down as she turned the switch. The bubbling water in the radiator steamed about the cap. Claire was conscious of tautness of the cords of her neck in ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... current, began to swing out into the stream, and the end of the gangplank slipped along the edge of the wharf. It threatened to fall into the river, and the girl was not yet on board. Blake leaped upon the plank. Seizing her shoulder, he drove her forward until a seaman, reaching out, drew her safe on deck. Then the paddles splashed and as the boat forged out into the stream, the girl turned and thanked Blake. He could not see her clearly, ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... stood surrounded with all his boys and girls just as they had stood the previous October, only that now there were no clouds on anybody's face, and Johnnie was skipping up and down for joy instead of grief. It was a long moment while the plank was being lowered from the gangway; but the moment it was in place, Katy darted across, first ashore of all the passengers, and ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge
... and its hoarse boom thrilled the heart of many a homesick man like myself. We had not much to put aboard, and when I climbed the gang-plank it was with a feeling ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... followed from the snowy bank Those [9] footmarks, one by one, Into the middle of the plank; 55 And further there ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... stones, were a few break-wheels, already rusty, surrounded by a quadrangular building pierced by a number of little windows. The building was unfinished; the sky could be seen through the joists of the roofing. Attached to the stop-plank of the gable a bunch of straw mixed with corn-ears fluttered its tricoloured ribbons ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... the sailor who, while drifting through a tempestuous ocean, clings for safety to a single plank, his powers of grasping it becoming every moment more feeble, and the deep darkness of the night only checkered by the flashes of lightning, hissing as they show the white tops of the billows, in which he is soon to ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... when they know that my father will pay them handsomely. You must go at once, unseen by the servants; they are at supper. Fetch your valise, and bring it to my room. We will put the casket in it, and such of your things as you must take out to make room for it, we can hide under the plank. My father will go with you to Pichon's, and we will communicate with you there as soon as ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... voyage on the Father of Waters landed the Boy in safety at the Woodville stopping-place. He leaped down the gang-plank with a shout and clasped his ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... sir, dis won't do: it's no good joke, I promise you. Ma chere amie, mon coeur," cried mademoiselle to Lady Augusta—"viens— come, let us go—Don't touch that," pursued she, roughly, to black Tom, who was going to draw away the plank that led to the shore. "I will go home dis minute, and speak to Miladi S——. Viens! viens, ma chere amie!"—and she darted out of the boat, whilst Dashwood followed, in vain attempting to stop her. ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... the missionary advanced towards a group of the children, whose souls, for the time being, were steeped in a see-saw. This instrument of delight consisted of a strong plank balanced on the trunk of a noble tree which had been recently felled, with many others, to thin the woods of the philanthropist's park. It was an enormous see-saw! such as the ragged creatures had never before seen—perhaps never conceived of, their experiences in such joys ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... a month later, Eric Marshall came out of the old, white-washed schoolhouse at Lindsay, and locked the door—which was carved over with initials innumerable, and built of double plank in order that it might withstand all the assaults and batteries to which it ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... the true cause of the display of energy. What happened in the Convention after the fall of Robespierre and the terrible Committee of Public Safety proves this, as well as the Chambers of 1815. Now, if the dictatorial power, placed in the hands of a few, has always been a plank of safety in great crises, it seems natural to draw the conclusion that countries controlled by elective assemblies must be politically and militarily weaker than pure monarchies, although in other respects they present ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini
... Advertiser. When this statement was disputed, as it was, Mr. Sumner, who had accompanied Dr. Howe, confirmed his account and added details of his own. He said that the inmates "were cramped together in rooms poorly ventilated and noisome with filth;" that "in two cages or pens constructed of plank, within the four stone walls of the same room" were confined, and had been for months, a raving maniac and an interesting young woman whose mind was so slightly obscured that it seemed any moment as if the cloud would pass away; that "the whole prison echoed with the blasphemies ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... while the engine which the tempest cold Had saved from burning with his friendly blast, Approached had so near the battered hold That on the walls her bridge at ease she cast: But Solyman ran thither fierce and bold, To cut the plank whereon the Christians passed. And had performed his will, save that upreared High in the skies a ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... to put the sash covering may also be bought complete, but here there is a chance to save money by constructing your own frames—the materials required being 2 x 4 inch lumber for posts, and inch-boards; or better, if you can easily procure them, plank ...
— Gardening Indoors and Under Glass • F. F. Rockwell
... a fatal mistake in saying to her sister, "He will never come again," and so depriving her of the last frail plank of hope, and letting her sink in the waves of despair. Perhaps, after all, suspense is not the worst of all things to bear; for in suspense there is hope, and in hope, life! Certain it is that a prop seemed withdrawn from ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... Johnny's direction, and said that he was right. His father's hand—rough and with a broken nail or two—was that of a superintendent who on occasion helped with a plank or a mortarboard. He had an open face and a pleasant manner; he was not at all the dominant personage I remembered meeting in that "yard," years ago. Johnny, it seemed, was putting up a row of small houses on the suburb's ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... the signing of binding contracts of importance, the determination of a course of drastic medical treatment, are deemed to be matters that require mature judgment. The age for such decisions is arbitrarily set at age twenty-one. Acts such as driving a car, sawing a plank, or buying food and clothing are considered to be "skills" that do not require judgment and therefore the age of demarcation varies with the state and ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... infliction in which he so unexpectedly found himself; for nothing would have tempted him to brave such a frost with the burning scent of a game four-legged fox. The park being spacious, and enclosed by a high plank paling, he hoped the fox would have the manners to confine himself within it; and so long as his threadings and windings favoured the supposition, our huntsman bustled along, yelling and screaming in apparent ecstasy ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... them, they used every artifice in their power to induce me to show my head above the deck of my boat. One shouted, "Here, you deck-hand, don't cut that man's rope; it's mean to steal a fellow's painter!" Another cried, "Don't put that heavy plank against that little skiff!" Suspecting their game, however, I kept under cover during the fifteen minutes' stay of the boat, when, moving off; they all shouted a jolly farewell, which mingled in the darkness with the hoarse whistle of the steamer, ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... an unplaned plank, the ends resting on kegs in front of the boilers. The unwashed gang simply helped themselves, and then retired to any convenient spot where they chose to eat. I discovered a fairly comfortable seat on a cracker box, and was still busily munching away on the coarse, poorly-cooked food, ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... all the same, two months wasted to a certain extent because I have not yet succeeded. And Heaven knows how I have ransacked this shop of yours! There is not a piece of furniture that I have left unsearched, not a plank in the floor that I have not inspected. All to no purpose. Yes, there was one thing, an incidental discovery. In a secret recess in your writing-table, Pancaldi, I turned up a little account-book in which you have set down your remorse, ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... on the other side of the table, moved close to the paroled convict. Between him and Curly there was only the thickness of a plank. The young man was afraid that the knocking of his ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine
... finest of its kind in England. Some of the tables and forms are of much later date, but an interest attaches even to this furniture from the fact of its having been made from oak grown close to the Hall; and as one of the tables has a slab composed of an oak plank nearly thirty inches wide, we can imagine what fine old trees once grew and flourished close to the now busy Fleet Street, and the bustling Strand. There are frames, too, in Middle Temple made from the oaken timbers which once formed the piles in the ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... thoughts of either wives or sweethearts. No one for the time dwelt on the somewhat serious work on which they were likely to be engaged the next day. At length, each man looked out for the softest plank he could find, and turned in to sleep, the officers enjoying no more luxurious couches than their inferiors; to some poor fellows it might be the last rest they were to take ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... justice, beyond all question, neither to commit murder nor robbery. What, then, would your just man do, if, in a case of shipwreck, he saw a weaker man than himself get possession of a plank? Would he not thrust him off, get hold of the timber himself, and escape by his exertions, especially as no human witness could be present in the mid-sea? If he acted like a wise man of the world, he would certainly ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... gunner, carpenter, and boatswain were to be mercifully treated. No torture was prepared for them, but they were to be promptly put to death. As to the lieutenants, they were to be given the choice between navigating the ship to the nearest British port, or walking the plank. ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... the time came for them to go aboard; and mustering their courage to the fore they went up the gang plank. ...
— The House Boat Boys • St. George Rathborne
... warned that some ordeal lay before him; but no one would tell him in what it consisted. He was led now into an outer room by two solemn brothers. Through the plank partition he could hear the murmur of many voices from the assembly within. Once or twice he caught the sound of his own name, and he knew that they were discussing his candidacy. Then there entered an inner guard with a green and gold sash across ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... bastonego. Blue blua. Bluish dubeblua. Blunder erarego. Blunt malakra. Blunt (mannered) malafabla. Blur malpurigi. Blush rugxigxi. Bluster fanfaroni. Boa boao. Boar porkviro. Board (food) nutrado—ajxo. Board (plank) tabulo. Board logxi. Boarder (house) logxanto. Boarder (school) edukato. Boarding school edukejo. Boarding-house logxantejo. Boast fanfaroni. Boast fanfarono. Boaster fanfaronulo. Boat boato. Boatman boatisto. Boat-hook hokstango. Boat-race sxipkurado. Boat (rowing) ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... together." The next winter was extremely mild, and Mr. Simonds writes on February 18, 1771, "There has not been one day's sledding this winter, and the season is so far advanced there cannot be much more than enough to get the hay from the marsh; but shall haul logs to finish the wharf and for plank for Fish Cisterns if it can ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... his hair could be cut. As he fanned the fire into a flame, a spark flew into his beard and singed it, and he had to sacrifice his beard as well as his hair. On his return to Assyria, Sennacherib found a plank, which he worshipped as an idol, because it was part of the ark which had saved Noah from the deluge. He vowed that he would sacrifice his sons to this idol if he prospered in his next ventures. But his sons heard ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... steps come out of the house and come to the water's edge. Then he heard sounds as though some one were walking on a hollow board—then with a word of warning there fell the end of a plank near him on the bank, and he was bidden to come across. He did so, though the bridge was narrow and he was half afraid of falling; but in a moment he was at the other side, a dark figure beside him. He was bidden to wait again, and the figure went out over the water and ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... illiterate preachers and incompetent teachers, who had not had any particular training for their profession. In fact, ninety-eight per cent of them had attended no school. We continued, however, to keep the "Industrial Plank" in our platform, and year after year some industry was added until we now have fourteen industries in constant operation. Agriculture is the foremost and basic industry of the institution. We do this because we are in a farming section and ninety-five ...
— Twenty-Five Years in the Black Belt • William James Edwards
... pieces of plank and putting them together, an old Roman, who had made some of his first campaigns under Pompey, came up and said to Philip, "Who are you that are preparing the funeral of Pompey the Great?" Philip answered, "I am his freedman." "But you shall not," said the old Roman, "have this ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... a profoundly hot August day when Andrew left the steamboat and actually stood upon Newport soil. More properly, he stood upon a plank wharf, and was not impressed with the dock. But as the omnibus rolled through the town his heart began to swell, his rather dull eyes to glow. The hour was two, and the city asleep under its ivy and flowers. After New York, it seemed deliciously ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton
... camp chair had long since given way beneath him, and when he had found at the Prouty Emporium two starch boxes of the right height, he had been as elated when they were given to him as if he had been the recipient of a valuable present. They now served as chairs on either side of his plank table. ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... past love affair often served Owen as a plank of transition to another. He told her the tale. It seemed to him extraordinary because it had happened to him, and it seemed to Evelyn very extraordinary because it was her first experience of the ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... suggested that we should retire to his billiard-room, to reach which we had to pass through his own special sanctum in which he dictates his letters, &c., to his private secretary—energetic Mr. William Plank, who has been with him for five hard working years—while he walks up and down the room. "I can always think better whilst I walk," he explained to me; "indeed, I have recently had the study lengthened to give me more room." By this time we were in the ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... caught in spiders' webs almost as strong as if the spinner had meant to go a-fowling. When they had got into the parlour, he saw that the building was indeed a ruin; there was not a whole pane of glass in the window, nor a plank of wood in the damp floor; and the fireplace, without fire, or grate to hold it, looked like the entrance to a burying-vault. John, however, walked quietly in, and sat down on a heap of rubbish by the ingleside; and William, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 331, September 13, 1828 • Various
... was that on a Wednesday morning about three weeks later, I was sitting at one end of a plank picnic table with five boys and girls lined up along the sides. This was to be our headquarters and factory for the summer—a roomy unused barn belonging to the parents of one of the group members, ...
— Junior Achievement • William Lee
... waited a moment while he fumbled along the boarded side of the trench. Then a plank slid back. It was ...
— Ruth Fielding at the War Front - or, The Hunt for the Lost Soldier • Alice B. Emerson
... hidden in the black shadows, Jimmie Dale, so silent as to be almost uncanny in his movements, crept along the few intervening feet to the fence that enclosed the courtyard. Here, next to the wall, a loosened plank swung outward at a touch, and he was standing in a narrow, black areaway beyond. There was only the depth of the house between himself and the street, and he paused now, crouched motionless against the wall, listening. He heard no footfalls from the pavement—only, like a distant murmur, the night ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... of an hour later they returned with a sergeant and two soldiers. The captain pointed him out to the sergeant. The latter crossed the plank on to the deck, put his hand on Julian's shoulder, and motioned to him to ...
— Through Russian Snows - A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow • G. A Henty
... the monster was fairly on its side, when an ominous creak was heard; the plank broke, and before a new hold could be taken the turtle was but ten feet from the water. Active measures were evidently necessary, and Sandy, taking the board, ran in front of the animal and struck wildly at its head, yelling to us to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... later he descended from an evil ark of a cab at the corral attached to Beaver Beach, and followed the path through the marsh to the crumbling pier. A red-bearded man was seated on a plank ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... to work the saw and the axes, but I will give an eye to strengthening the craft in-board. Just point out the spars and plank you can spare, and we'll see what can be done. At any rate, my lads, you can now work with the certainty that your lives are safe. My schooner lies about six leagues from you, as safely moored as if she lay in ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... ship to Westeray, in Shetland. Bothwell escorted Anna to the castle of Noltland; and as she landed at the pier, a young man sprang forward and helped her across the plank. She felt agitated, she knew not why; she looked at the man's face, but it was concealed. It was Konrad. He had fallen over a cliff, had been carried out to sea on a plank, had been picked up by a ship which had carried him ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... was quite happy—I only had to fancy I'd been shipwrecked, and that after clinging to a plank five days without food or water on the great lonely Atlantic, my frozen, sodden form had been picked up by this great safe steamer and given this delightful dry berth, regular meals, and the spectacle of all ...
— The Melting-Pot • Israel Zangwill
... radical party should win in the election, the Democrats asserted, the result would be "a subjected and conquered people, amid the ruins of liberty and the scattered fragments of the Constitution." The regulation of the suffrage, one plank declared, had always been in the hands of the individual states. The most prominent place in the platform, however, was given to the question of the public debt. Part of the bonds issued during the war had, by acts of Congress, been made payable in "dollars," ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... gave a spring to get out on dry land. Of course his boat went away from him, nearly jerking Rowles into the water. As for the awkward creature himself, he fell on his knees on the plank edging of the bank, and his feet dangled in the stream. The launch went on again, crushing the ...
— Littlebourne Lock • F. Bayford Harrison
... done it!" he gasped. "I forgot to shove the plank back onto the next boat and it fell into the ...
— Boy Scouts in the North Sea - The Mystery of a Sub • G. Harvey Ralphson
... now reduced to a wan and wasted specter of its once plethoric self. In the midst of casting-up he heard the signal for departure; and so he went topside of the ship and, stationing himself on the promenade deck alongside the gang-plank, he raised his voice and addressed the assembled multitude on the ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... they's a place down there where the river's so narrow it's bent over," volunteered a third pessimist, as he cut an artistic initial in a plank with the skill of long practice. "And you'll go through the Black Canyon like a bat out o' hell. But I has no notion whatsoever that you'll ever come up when you hits that waterfall on the other end. When her nose dips under, ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... tell the name of his friend, who, as if loath to cross the plank, held back for a few more words. Tom gave him a little push at last, and said, "Good-bye, you really must go. Success to you, but don't for a moment think of carrying out that quixotic plan you first mentioned. Better jump into the ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... that I desire increase, profit, and exaltation of body, mind, and soul. The surroundings, the clothes, the dwelling, the social status, the circumstances are to me utterly indifferent. Let the floor of the room be bare, let the furniture be a plank table, the bed a mere pallet. Let the house be plain and simple, but in the midst of air and light. These are enough—a cave would be enough; in a warmer climate the open air would suffice. Let me be ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies
... and there was hell in his glance. Then, taking his resolve, and putting the best face upon it, since no other could help him here, he kicked off his shoes, peeled off his fine coat of biscuit-coloured taffetas, and climbed upon the plank. ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... of rank, boiling coffee in the air. Bacon was sizzling over the fire and a huge corn pone was baking on a plank before the coals. Mag did not propose to starve her ...
— Navy Boys Behind the Big Guns - Sinking the German U-Boats • Halsey Davidson
... had urged instant death. "Let him walk the plank," he suggested, his small eyes glittering with hate. "He's only a boy, but I tell you I'm afraid ...
— The New Land - Stories of Jews Who Had a Part in the Making of Our Country • Elma Ehrlich Levinger
... not argue a scarcity of seats under the canvas. Fran found a plank without a back, loosely disposed, and entirely unoccupied. She seated herself, straight as an Indian, and with the air of ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... the gallant king Swung round his sword, and to the chin Clove Eyvind down: his faithless mail Against it could no more avail, Than the thin plank against the shock When the ship's side beats on the rock. By his bright sword with golden haft Thro' helm, and head, and hair, was cleft The Danish champion; and amain, With terror ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... loudly and foolishly of emancipation from political thraldom, as if the present connection of Canada with Great Britain were a yoke and a burden too heavy and too galling to be borne. They had adopted the plank of British connection by a majority of only four. They had chosen as their standard-bearer, their prophet and their president, one whose chief claim to prominence lay in the persistency with which he had advocated the breaking up of the British empire. Mr. ...
— George Brown • John Lewis
... harboured a belief that all might be well on the coming home of her father. The last plank was shattered now. From the chair of the cabinet minister Don Ignacio Valverde would step direct into the cell of a prison! Nothing uncommon in the political history of Mexico—only ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... carry on till he comes up within range: and then, to keep the Company's canvas from being shot to rags, I shall shorten sail; and to save ship and cargo and all our lives, I shall fight while a plank of her swims. Better to be killed in hot blood than walk the ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... other water-butts would give way, and that I should be either crushed by its falling on me, or half-drowned by its contents. Then I thought what would be my fate should the fearful buffeting the ship was receiving cause her to start a plank. The water would rush in, and before I could possibly make my escape to a higher level I should be drowned, even should the ship herself keep above water, and that I thought was ...
— Dick Cheveley - His Adventures and Misadventures • W. H. G. Kingston
... great deal of furniture, you mean. Why, there isn't a chair in the house, nor a carpet, nor a curtain, nor a cupboard, nor a bed; in fact all there is is the rough dresser in the kitchen and that plank table, and your bedstead. I really think that's all. Chloe has the kettle and two cooking-pots, and there is the dish and six plates ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... there! And it's a darn pretty town. Lots of fine maples and box-elders, and there's two of the dandiest lakes you ever saw, right near town! And we've got seven miles of cement walks already, and building more every day! Course a lot of these towns still put up with plank walks, but not ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... I stood on the bank of the river and observed the pontoniers as they threw their bridge of boats across the stream. Twice each week they unload the pontoons from the wagons, run them into the water, put the scantling from boat to boat, lay down the plank, and thus make a good bridge on which men, horses, and wagons can cross. After completing the bridge, they immediately begin to take it up, load the lumber and pontoons on the wagons, and return to camp. They can bridge any stream between this and the Tennessee in an hour, and can put a bridge ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... Race had been intensely interesting, but the Obstacle Race proved an even greater excitement. Two thin planks of wood were placed across the bath, floating upon the water. The competitors started from the deep end, dived under the first plank, and then scrambled over the second. At the shallow end were a number of large round wash-tubs; each candidate had to seize upon one of these and seat herself in it, a most difficult feat of fine balancing, for unless she hit upon the exact center of ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... This was no slight performance, and required all the strength of the camp. Strong "rheims" were attached to one end, and these were passed over a limb of the tree, still higher up than those on which the staging was to rest. One stood above to guide the huge piece of plank-work, while all the rest exerted their strength upon the ropes below. Even little Jan pulled with all his might—though a single pound avoirdupois weight would have been about ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... Christian name. It struck me that I had heard the voice before, but when and where I could not at once determine. In the short space it took to cover the road between the path from Hamilton's shop and the first plank of the Combermere Bridge I had thought over half a dozen people who might have committed such a solecism, and had eventually decided that it must have been singing in my ears. Immediately opposite Peliti's shop my eye was arrested ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... hallway of the left wing, near his door, was a small ladder leading to the second story roof, and a dozen feet from the edge of the roof stood an old oak tree, on the further side of a tall hedge. Kenneth managed to carry a plank to the roof, where, after several attempts, he succeeded in dropping one end into a crotch of the oak, thus connecting the edge of the roof with the tree by means of the narrow plank. After this, at first sight of the girls in his end of the garden, he fled to the roof, ran across ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces • Edith Van Dyne
... rings: they leave off bawling, "Anybody else for the shore?" The last grape and Bell's Life merchant has scuffled over the plank: the Johns of the departing nobility and gentry line the brink of the quay, and touch their hats: Hutchison touches his hat to me—to ME, heaven bless him! I turn round inexpressibly affected and delighted, and whom do ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the waiting masses, but directly opposite the landing there was a backward movement in the happy, laughing crowd, the gang-plank came down with a slam, and people began hurrying from the boat. Crowded against the fish house on the dock, Henderson could only advance a few steps at a time. He was straining every nerve to protect and assist Edith. He saw no one he recognized near them, so ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... best to have a message conveyed to my friend Betty. Unwilling to alarm her mistress, Betty resolved to dispose of me herself. She came to me, and told me to rise and dress quickly. We hurried down stairs, and across the yard, into the kitchen. She locked the door, and lifted up a plank in the floor. A buffalo skin and a bit of carpet were spread for me to lie on, and a quilt thrown over me. "Stay dar," said she, "till I sees if dey know 'bout you. Dey say dey vil put thar hans on you afore twelve ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)
... had obtained four planks, every one about a foot wide and six feet or so long. They were sufficient to protect them from the rain which would run under the tent and soak into the ground. Harry had long since learned that a tent and a mere strip of plank were a great luxury, and now he appreciated them ...
— The Scouts of Stonewall • Joseph A. Altsheler
... 'em as well as he could in his fearful hurry, and his arms bein' full, he threw the dressin' gown round his shoulders and madly raced over the gang plank, still emitting that agonizing cry: "Samantha, wait for me! stop the ship!" which he kep' up after I had advanced onward and he held ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... them? Duty? Virtue? His duty to himself? Laughable obstacles. Fragile plank on which ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... should have had the clouds below us, as they are on Penang Hill. The path up the mountain—if path it can be called—is almost a staircase of tumbled rocks, and requires both strength and agility to climb. It was quite beyond me; but I was carried on a man's back, sitting on a bit of plank, with a strip of cloth fastened round my waist and across the man's forehead, my back to his back. The Dyaks are famous mountaineers, their bare feet cling to the stones, or notched trunks of trees thrown from one rock to another. I never felt unsafe on my Dyak friend's back, and he used ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... but to and fro I saw the dead men glide, With never a plank their bones to tow, As the slippery seas they ride. While the bale-star burned where the mists swayed low They clasped each hand to hand, And swore an oath by the winds that blow— They swore by ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... rest the unfortunate Landolfo, albeit many a time that day he had called for death, (choosing rather to die than return home poor as he found himself,) seeing it near at hand, was fearful thereof and like the others, laid hold of a plank that came to his hand, so haply, an he put off drowning awhile, God might send ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... persons might be concealed, at need. The strangers displayed great familiarity with the nature and ordinary positions of these private recesses. Not a chest, a closet, or even a drawer of size, escaped their vigilance; nor was there a plank that sounded hollow, but the master of the valley was called on to explain the cause. In one or two instances, boards were wrested violently from their fastenings, and the cavities beneath were explored, with a wariness that increased as ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... is preaching with fierce gesticulations. He is not in the pulpit, but he stands about twenty paces from it, on a plank hastily flung across trestles. Don't be afraid of his treating a question of temporal ethics after the fashion of our worldly preachers. He is dogmatically and furiously descanting on the Immaculate Conception, on fasting in Lent, on avoiding meat of a Friday, ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... attention?" said the rough voice of a workman, carrying a plank on his shoulder. The man passed on. He was the voice of Providence saying to the watcher: "What are you meddling with? Think of your own duty; and leave these Parisians to ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... veritable giants in size, that the half disc displayed in the California Section, with its thick ring of bark on the rounding side uppermost, stood sixteen feet high. From the huge trunk of this tree came the accompanying plank of such extraordinary dimensions, that a placard proclaimed it the largest plank the world ever saw. This plank was five inches thick, twenty-five feet long and sixteen feet nine inches wide; containing about two thousand ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... him, except a few foolish Free Trade ideas in his head. He was trotting along, happy as the day, for he had in his mouth a nice shoulder of succulent mutton. By and by he came to a stream bridged by a plank. He trotted along, and looking over the side of the plank, he saw the markets of the world, and dived for them. A minute afterwards he was crawling up the bank the wettest, the sickest, the nastiest, the most muttonless dog that ever ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... all live in one big slave cabin, built out of plank. It built sort-a like de 'partment house. Dey four rooms and each fam'ly have one room. Dey have a lamp and a candle for our comfort. It jes' a li'l, ord'nary brass lamp. Dey used to make 'em out of wax and tallow. Dey raise dere own bees and when dey rob de bee gums ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves. - Texas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... which, when forced from its hinges, had been carelessly flung aside during the ardour of curiosity to ascertain the contents which it concealed, and had been afterwards, as it seems, secreted by the mendicant. There was a word and a number upon the plank, and the beggar made them more distinct by spitting upon his ragged blue handkerchief, and rubbing off the clay by which the inscription was obscured. It was ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... ha! Well, why not? I seize this wretched plank or sink with all that in me is. Men have done it. But not Edgar Poe! Sell my soul ...
— Semiramis and Other Plays - Semiramis, Carlotta And The Poet • Olive Tilford Dargan
... that name very naturally angered him. It was a slight, a slur upon his voice, and he resented it at once. It must be remembered also that the crow had never seen a white rabbit before, and Bumper's appearance floating on the plank had excited the bird's curiosity. White rabbits don't run wild in the woods, and Bumper was almost as much a mystery to the crow as the latter was to the former. All the rabbits Mr. Crow knew were gray or brown, with a white belly and tail, and none of them had pink ...
— Bumper, The White Rabbit • George Ethelbert Walsh
... with the name of the steamer in which John Rowland had sailed (for his movements had been traced in the search for evidence), where it arrived, too late for publication, the morning of the day on which, with Myra on his shoulder, he stepped down the gang-plank at a North River dock. As a consequence, he was surrounded on the dock by enthusiastic reporters, who spoke of the story and asked for details. He refused to talk, escaped them, and gaining the side streets, ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... the narrow aperture left by the taking out of the oaken plank, but could see nothing, as the depth of our pit made it somewhat dark at the bottom, so I knelt down, and thrust my hand through the opening and felt about. Presently I felt something hard, like a bundle of sticks, and with a tug ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... was; so I stretched myself up on the step of the buggy, and licked her hand, and barking, to ask her to excuse me, I ran off to the other side of the log hut. There was a door there, but it was closed, and propped firmly up by a plank that I could not move, scratch as hard as I liked. I was determined to get in, so I jumped against the door, and tore and bit at the plank, till Miss Laura ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders
... and as the two soldiers picked me up and laid me along a plank, I made signs that they were to carry me as I directed. He nodded, and fell into ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... march, he looked right and left, backward and forward, and then said, "Guess I'll save a block in going to Vine street, by cutting through the Citadel Square-so I will. The gates are always locked at this hour, but I know where I can slip through under a loose plank, papers and all." So saying, he hobbled across the street, found the opening, and doubling himself up, went through it in a trice. Then trudging on, he bethought himself again of the sovereign remedy ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... force of the blast as the compressed oxygen and acetylene were expelled carried a fine spray and the disintegrated metal visibly before it. And yet it was not a big hole that it made—scarcely an eighth of an inch wide, but clear and sharp as if a buzz saw were eating its way through a three-inch plank of white pine. With tense muscles Kennedy held this terrific engine of destruction and moved it as easily as if it had been a mere pencil of light. He was easily the calmest of us all as we crowded about him at ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... in position and properly connected to the keel, and all her wales and stringers bolted-to; she was therefore so far advanced that the next thing in order was to lay her planking. This planking, it may be mentioned, was of oak throughout, arranged to be laid on in two thicknesses, each plank of the outer skin overlaying a joint between two planks in the skin beneath it; and every plank had already been roughly cut to shape and carefully marked. All, therefore, that was now required was to complete the trimming of each plank and fix it in position. The inner layer of planking was much ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... who will save himself. He who is wrecked by a storm and tossed upon the raging sea, ought to be upon the watch for a plank by which he can save himself. He must keep his eyes open, and not let his arms hang idly; for if he allows himself to be swallowed up he becomes a self-murderer, who, like Erostratus, destroyed the holy temple, and gained eternal fame through ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... Thurston, running across a bending plank, halted on the rock which served as foundation for the main bridge pier. Beside him Summers shouted confused orders to a group of struggling men. The moonlight beat down mistily through the haze that rose from the river, and Geoffrey could see the long wedge-headed timber ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... of the house meets the suggestions of the outside. This is a projection of the slave's "quarters" into freedom. The cabin of the slave was, at best, a place to eat and sleep in; there was no thought of the esthetic in such places. A quilt on a plank was a luxury to the tired farm-hand, and paint was nothing to the poor, sun-scorched fellow who sought the house for shade rather than beauty. Habits of personal cleanliness were not inculcated, ...
— The Negro Problem • Booker T. Washington, et al.
... a great ship lightning-split, And speeded hither on the sigh Of one who gave an enemy His plank, then plunged aside ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... said Madame Henrietta, "I forgot the secret spring; the fourth plank of the flooring—press on the spot where you will observe a knot in the wood. Those are the instructions; press, vicomte! press, I ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... the great resort of Honolulu. There is the finest of bathing the year round; and what is more interesting, the native surf swimmers. With a piece of plank just large enough to support his weight in the water, the bather swims out to the reef in still water. Then he, or she—for young girls are most expert swimmers—makes for open water, where the combers are forming. ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... like that! Love finds the way, it doesn't matter what kind of a girl she is. But listen to me, Lou; we've got to be mighty careful that Maud doesn't suspect that we're putting up a job on her. She'd balk at the gang-plank and that would be the end of it. She must not know that he is on board. Now, here's the idea," and he talked on in a strangely subdued voice for fifteen minutes, his enthusiasm mounting to such heights that she was fairly lifted to the seventh heaven he produced, and, for once in her life, ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... region watched their progress, and gave them every variety of kindly greeting. The mother who was sitting at work under the tamarind-tree called her children down from its topmost branches to do honour to the travellers. Many a half-naked negro in the rice-grounds slipped from the wet plank on which, while gazing, he forgot his footing, and laughed his welcome from out of the mud and slime. The white planters who were taking their morning ride over their estates, bent to the saddle-bow, the large straw hat in hand, and would not cover their heads from the hot sun till the ladies ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... geological outlines aside, and take up Turner's vignette of the Alps at Daybreak. After what has been said, a single glance at it will be enough. Observe the exquisite decision with which the edge of the uppermost plank of the great peak is indicated by its clear dark side and sharp shadow; then the rise of the second low ridge on its side, only to descend again precisely in the same line; the two fissures of this peak, one pointing to its summit, the other rigidly parallel ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... of longing for the simple life, for nature, that came over everybody. Some people sought it at the seaside, where nature had thrown out her broad plank walks and her long piers and her vaudeville shows. Others sought it in the heart of the country, where nature had spread her oiled motor roads and her wayside inns. Others, like the Newberrys, preferred to "rough it" in ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... heavily against the planks, and felt that one of them yielded. Then, standing back, he dealt a heavy blow on the spot with his clenched fist; a second, and the plank broke in. He put his arm through the aperture, and easily slipped the bolt back, and the door flew open. The blood streamed from ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... piece of wood required in the work on which he was engaged. Being in a great hurry, he took little heed where he set his feet; and a board giving way, he must have fallen, if he had not grasped a large plank laid upon the transverse ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... early civic life was very crude. Even the fire department, which was by far the most efficient, was, as has been indicated, more occupied with politics, rivalry, and fun, than with its proper function. The plank roads were good as long as they remained unworn, but they soon showed many holes, large and small, jagged, splintered, ugly holes going down into the depths of the mud. Many of these had been mended by private philanthropists; many ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... of these strange abodes, but it was dizzy work to walk the plank, and as difficult to walk the gridiron floor in shoes. Both were wretched habitations, but doubtless they suit their inmates, who need nothing more than a shelter from the sun and rain. The men wore only loin ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... to be remarked that the third house, lower down in the street, was empty, and under repair—that a long ladder was left by the workmen, leading from the pavement to the top of the house—and that, on returning to their work, on the morning of the 27th, the men found the plank which they had tied to the ladder, to prevent anyone from using it in their absence, removed, and lying on the ground. As to the possibility of ascending by this ladder, passing over the roofs of the houses, passing back, and descending again, unobserved—it ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... them was built on the top of a mound, which was raised to the height of from three to twenty feet above the ground and faced on its sloping sides with dry rubble-work of stone. The ascent to the temple was by a thick plank, the upper surface of which was cut into notched steps. The proportions of the sacred edifice itself were inelegant, if not uncouth, its height being nearly twice as great as its breadth at the base. The roof was high-pitched; ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... and his assistants were slung over the sides of the vessel upon which they plied their screwdrivers for a considerable time with great energy, but, apparently, with very little result. In the course of a quarter of an hour, however, a long narrow plank was loosened, which, when stripped off, discovered a narrow line of bright scarlet running quite round the vessel, a little more than a foot above the water-line. This having been accomplished, they next proceeded to the figurehead, and, unscrewing the white lady who ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... no more consarn than if it had been a company drill. Had a cigar then, too. But the second day; May the 6th, I was with the regiment. I'll never forget that day," said Ephraim, warming to the subject, "when we was fightin' Ewell up and down the Orange Plank Road, playin' hide-and-seek with the Johnnies in the woods. You remember ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the privileged classes in Hungary, the subversion of the administration, and the establishment of a democracy. The means for the execution of this project were furnished by two secret societies." Huergelmer relates: "A certain Dr. Plank somewhat thoughtlessly ridiculed the institution of the jubilee; in order to convince him of its utility, he was sent as a recruit to the Italian army, an act that was highly praised by the newspapers." On the 22d of July, 1795, a Baron von Riedel was placed in the pillory at Vienna for ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... men that never will fail (How aforetime they've fought!) But Murder may yet prevail— They may sink as Craven sank. Therewith one hard, fierce thought, Burning on heart and lip, Ran like fire through the ship— Fight her, to the last plank! ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)
... fifty-six feet of solid timber in it exclusive of the branches. As the party advanced, they saw many other trees, which were still larger. A young one they cut down, the wood of which was heavy and solid, not fit for masts, but such as would make the finest plank in the world. The carpenter of the ship, who was with the party, said that the timber resembled that of the pitch-pine, which is lightened by tapping. If it should appear, that some such method would be successful in lightening these trees, ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... longer. English Beer was a great rarity, and the Vessel lay not at any great distance from my Lodgings; so without any further Persuasion I consented. When we came upon the Bridge, to which the Ship we were to go aboard was fastened, we found, as was customary, as well as necessary, a Plank laid over from the Ship, and a Rope to hold by, for safe Passage. The Night was very dark; and I had cautiously enough taken care to provide a Man with a Lanthorn to prevent Casualties. The Man with ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe
... people do. You hear of some especially good man who is being a lawyer backwards practicing regularly with great success. You observe his patients from day to day and see how the truth works. Then you go down to his office, plank down your money and ...
— The Ghost in the White House • Gerald Stanley Lee
... only be entered by a plank propped against the threshold, along which the intruder must foot it gingerly, clutching for support to sprays of poison oak, the proper product of the country. Herein was, on either hand, a triple tier of beds, where miners had once lain; and the other gable was pierced by a sashless ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... torn the mast and rudder, and many a plank besides, from that foundering vessel, the town of Memphis. It seemed indeed a miracle that had saved the whole from being reduced to cinders; and for this, next to God's providence, they might thank the black incendiary himself and his Arabs. The crime was committed with ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... nearest the top should be not less than 2 feet from that point, the others interspersed about 2 feet apart—the greatest strain being near the top. The arch should be 7 feet high by 51/2 wide in front, with a gather on the top and sides of about 1 foot, with plank floor; and if this has a little incline it will facilitate shoveling the lime when drawn. The arch should have a strong capstone; also one immediately under the well of the kiln, with a hole 2 feet in diameter to draw the lime through; ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 360, November 25, 1882 • Various
... naturally inclines to follow the annual course of the sun. Hence its windings, in great measure. Having selected and felled your pine, cut it across into logs of the length of plank you want.' ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... this was not altogether safe; it might even prove disastrous, but it might become a plank of rescue from that African whirlpool. Stas in the end began to wonder why the possibility of meeting with Smain should have frightened him at first and, as he was anxious for quick relief for Nell, he determined ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... presidential nomination in June, and he accepted the strong civil rights platform that emerged from the convention. The resolution committee of that convention had proposed a mild civil rights plank in the hope of preventing the defection of southern delegates, but in a dramatic floor fight Hubert H. Humphrey, the mayor of Minneapolis and a candidate for the U.S. Senate, forced through one of the strongest civil rights statements in the history of the party. This plank endorsed ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... Building) want a story of 5,000 words (lowest limit of their London agent) for $1,000 and offer to plank the check on delivery, and it was partly to meet that demand that I took that other holiday. So as I have no short story that suits me (and can't and shan't make promises), the best I can do is to offer the longer one which I finished on my second ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... is constructed of wood, vertically sided, and battened, (with 1-1/2 inch tongued and grooved pine plank,) with horizontal strips in line of the window sills and floors, to hide the buts, and small triangular pieces in the corners, which gives the pretty effect of paneling. The whole is stained by a mixture ...
— Woodward's Country Homes • George E. Woodward
... hurricane-house—forming on each side of the line of masts a smooth, unencumbered plane the entire length of the deck, inclining with a gentle curve from the bow and stern toward the waist. The bulwarks are high, and are surmounted by a paneled monkey-rail; the belaying-pins in the plank-shear are of lignum-vitae and mahogany, and upon them the rigging is laid up in accurate and graceful coils. The balustrade around the cabin companion-way and sky-light is made of polished brass, the wheel is ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... their power to induce me to show my head above the deck of my boat. One shouted, "Here, you deck-hand, don't cut that man's rope; it's mean to steal a fellow's painter!" Another cried, "Don't put that heavy plank against that little skiff!" Suspecting their game, however, I kept under cover during the fifteen minutes' stay of the boat, when, moving off; they all shouted a jolly farewell, which mingled in the darkness with the hoarse ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... like a horse unbroken when first he feels the rein, The furious river struggled hard, and toss'd his tawny mane, And burst the curb, and bounded, rejoicing to be free, And whirling down, in fierce career, battlement, and plank, and pier, Rush'd ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... fact so long we tho't de place 'longed ter mah daddy. We had a house wid big cracks in hit, had a big fier place, a big pot dat hong on de fier en a skillet dat we cooked corn bread in. Had a hill ob taters under de house, would raise up a plank, rake down in de dirt git taters, put dem in de fier ter roast. We had meat ter eat in de middle ob de day but none at mawnin' er nite. We got one pair ob shoes a ye'r, dey had brass on de toes. I uster ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Tennessee Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... which crowded upon her; they were refused, and thus was one of the books of the sibyls lost. She bowed to the great statue of Liberty near by, exclaiming, "O Liberte! comme on t' a jouee!"[2] and gave her majestic form to the headsman to be bound upon the plank. ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... peering along the hall. The bondi uttered no sound, having heard quite enough of what had gone on outside. Grettir lay quite still and did not move. Glam saw a heap of something in the seat, came farther into the hall and seized the cloak tightly with his hand. Grettir pressed his foot against the plank and the cloak held firm. Glam tugged at it again still more violently, but it did not give way. A third time he pulled, this time with both hands and with such force that he pulled Grettir up out of the seat, and between them the cloak was torn in two. Glam looked at the bit which he held in his ...
— Grettir The Strong - Grettir's Saga • Unknown
... and gives out a milky white liquor when squeezed, it is judged to be sufficiently softened and fermented. In this state, the grains are taken out of the water by a sieve, and put into a canvas sack, and the husks are separated and rubbed off, by beating and rubbing the sack upon a plank: the sack is then put into a tub filled with cold water, and trodden or beaten till the water becomes milky and turbid, from the starch which it takes up from the grain. A scum sometimes swims upon the surface of the water, which must be carefully ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... after six o'clock, Galbraith said, "Quarter to eight, everybody," and dismissed them with a nod for a scurry to what were evidently dressing-rooms at the other side of the ball, the ship of Rose's hopes had utterly gone to pieces. She had a plank to keep herself afloat on. It was the determination to stay there until he should tell her in so many words that he hadn't any use for her and under no conceivable ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... policy prevailed in his councils, and animated his words. A feeling of loyalty displayed itself everywhere during his progress, not only with his old party, but amongst the masses; every hand was raised towards him, as to a plank of safety in a shipwreck. The people care little for consistency. At this time I saw, in the northern departments, the same popularity surround the exiled King and the vanquished army. Napoleon had abdicated in Paris, and, notwithstanding a ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... mud. I mean that in walking down the middle of any street in Cairo, a moderately-framed man would soon stick fast, and not be able to move. The houses are generally built at considerable intervals, and rarely face each other; and along one side of each street a plank boarding was laid, on which the mud had accumulated only up to one's ankles. I walked all over Cairo with big boots, and with my trowsers tucked up to my knees; but at the crossings I found considerable danger, and occasionally had ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... but the thickness of a single plank (between the voyager and the sea), and underneath is Hell, 'tis indeed a weird thing that a black-robed priest should rise from the sea (or, "'tis surely a ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... 1,500 sides. The only "improvement" then known—1784—was the use of a wooden plug in the lime vats and water pools to let off the contents into the brook. The bark was ground by horse power. There was a curb fifteen feet in diameter, made of three-inch plank, with a rim fifteen inches high. Within this was a stone wheel with many hollows and the wooden wheel with long pegs. Two horses turned these wheels which would grind half a cord of bark in a day of twelve hours. The first year William was at work ...
— Jukes-Edwards - A Study in Education and Heredity • A. E. Winship
... him by that name very naturally angered him. It was a slight, a slur upon his voice, and he resented it at once. It must be remembered also that the crow had never seen a white rabbit before, and Bumper's appearance floating on the plank had excited the bird's curiosity. White rabbits don't run wild in the woods, and Bumper was almost as much a mystery to the crow as the latter was to the former. All the rabbits Mr. Crow knew were gray or brown, with a white belly and tail, and ...
— Bumper, The White Rabbit • George Ethelbert Walsh
... bearing the name of Flat Heads are very numerous, but very few among them actually practice the custom. Among the Chinooks it is almost universal. The process is thus effected: The child is placed on a thick plank, to which it is lashed with thongs to a position from which it can not escape, and the back of the head supported by a sort of pillow made of moss or rabbit-skins, with an inclined piece resting on the forehead of the child. This is every day drawn down a little tighter by means ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... later, and, for some hours after dusk and for several before dawn, it utters incessantly its loud monotonous chuck, chuck, chuck, chuck, chuck, which has been aptly compared to the sound made by striking a plank sharply with a hammer. ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar
... lassoed, it was hauled up and its head held down by a plank, when a hot brand was handed to a man standing ready to press it against the creature's skin, where an indelible mark was left, when the little bellower was allowed to rise and make its ...
— Adventures in Australia • W.H.G. Kingston
... peculiar to San Francisco, with its balmy breezes and Italian skies, there seemed an unusual stillness, such a quiet as precedes the cyclone in tropical climes, only broken occasionally by silvery peals of the church bells. When suddenly I heard the plank street resound with the tramp of a multitude. No voice or other sound was heard but the tramp of soldiery, whose rhythm of sound and motion is ever a proclamation that thrills by its intensity, whether conquest or conservation ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... the stick used for driving cattle, baton gourdin (Dozy). Lane applies the word to a wooden plank used for levelling ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... Belgrade, coming from below, is interesting, and one has a vivid recollection ever afterward of swarms of barefooted coal-heavers, clad in coarse sacking, rushing tumultuously up and down a gang-plank, as negroes do when wooding up on a Southern river; of shouting and swaggering Austrian customs officials, clad in gorgeous raiment, but smoking cheap cigars; of Servian gendarmes emulating the bluster and surpassing ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... still more important fact to notice. The greenhouse has nowadays a tendency to become a mere kitchen garden under glass. And when it is used to such a purpose, the simplest plank-and-glass unheated shelters already give fabulous crops—such as, for instance, 500 bushels of potatoes per acre as a first crop, ready by the end of April; after which a second and a third crop are obtained in the extremely high temperature which ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... determined to fill them with the oil to be obtained from these animals, and hoisted out my boats to attack them. We killed a large number, which we sent on board, and continued our fishery with great success, having only lost one boat, the bottom plank of which had been bitten out by the tusks of one of these unwieldy animals. Of a sudden the wind changed to the southward, and the small icebergs which were then to windward rapidly closed with the large ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... of the people are cleaner than might be supposed after taking into consideration the dirtiness of the clothes and persons of those who inhabit them. They are as a rule substantial thatched cottages with plank or stone walls, and raised on a plinth some 2 to 3 ft. from the ground. The only window is a small opening on one side of the house, which admits but a dim light into the smoke-begrimed interior. The beams are so low that it is impossible for a person of ordinary stature to stand ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... save for the short chains that were still fastened to his wrists, and the plank walls that rose ...
— A Woman at Bay - A Fiend in Skirts • Nicholas Carter
... the plank with clean hands than to be hanged with the death of innocent persons on your conscience," ...
— The Boy Allies with Uncle Sams Cruisers • Ensign Robert L. Drake
... kind friend will say was lavished on the rude outer world by big John Burley! Genius, genius! are we all alike, then, save when we leash ourselves to some matter-of-fact material, and float over the roaring seas on a wooden plank or a herring tub?" And after he had uttered that cry of a secret anguish, John Burley had begun to show symptoms of growing fever and disturbed brain; and when they had got him into bed, he lay there muttering to himself, until, towards midnight, he had asked Leonard to bring ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... members, who were floating and swimming as if in their natural element; that, however, Miss Latimer would not allow. Placing a lifebuoy round Patty's waist, she decreed that she must commence to learn her strokes, and showed her carefully how these ought to be done. There was a long plank across the bath upon which the teacher could stand, and by means of a rope attached to the lifebuoy, could hold up her pupil until she had mastered the art of keeping herself afloat. Patty found it a great deal ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... the woman of whom I have just spoken was a soldier in the Southern army. One time while he was out foraging, he went into a Union woman's house and asked for a pie. Finding out that she had her pies hidden under the puncheon floor, he raised a plank and proceeded to help himself. The woman, seeing her opportunity, threw the plank onto his neck and jumped on the plank. The man got a furlough, came home, and was confined to his bed for some time. It was reported about the neighborhood that ...
— Trials and Triumphs of Faith • Mary Cole
... and the sunny coast of Fife. How all my delightful, girlish, solitary rambles came back to me! Why do such pleasant times ever pass? or why do they ever come? The Scotch airs set me crying with all the recollections they awakened. In spite, moreover, of my knowing every plank and pulley, and scene-shifter and carpenter behind those scenes, here was I crying at this Scotch melodrama, feeling my heart puff out my chest for "Rob Roy," though Mr Ward is, alas! my acquaintance, and I know when he leaves ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... of a superstitious one, 'seeking after a sign from heaven,' only half believing its own creed, and, therefore, on tiptoe for miraculous confirmations of it, at the same time that it fiercely persecutes any one who, by attempting innovation or reform, seems about to snatch from weak faith the last plank which keeps it from sinking into the abyss. In describing such an age, the historian lies under this paradoxical disadvantage, that his case is actually too strong for him to state it. If he tells the whole truth, the ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... tying every one with a rope, that they might not drive away. When this was done I went down the ship's side, and pulling them to me, I tied four of them together at both ends as well as I could, in the form of a raft, and laying two or three short pieces of plank upon them crossways, I found I could walk upon it very well, but that it was not able to bear any great weight, the pieces being too light. So I went to work, and with a carpenter's saw I cut a spare topmast into three lengths, and added them to my ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... to wait quietly, and hope for a ship. We are in the right line, and there must be lots of vessels on their way, besides those which sailed with us, for Portsmouth. So we must keep watch and watch. Now, Peter, you lie down on that plank, it is just about long enough, you shall have two hours' sleep, and then I'll have two, after that we will have four ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty
... the steadiest head," I objected. We had learned that long ago—that Marie could walk the coping-stones of the battlements with as little concern as we paced a plank set on ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... Petersen would have made as he stood there, with the spray rattling like hail upon his drenched tarpaulins, and his clear bright eye looking keenly out through the wet hair that was plastered over his face. It might be seen by the firm set of his mouth that he meant to fight it out while a plank would swim; but he looked grave and ...
— Harper's Young People, January 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... of the logs when large were filled with split pieces of wood; when small they were plugged with moss. A door was made of hewn planks, and hinged very simply on two pins; one made by letting the plank project as a point, the other by nailing on a pin after the door was placed; both pins fitting, of ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... destination, Athies, formerly a flourishing little town but since utterly wrecked and still smouldering, it was quite difficult to reach. Sent on ahead as member of a billeting party, I had to cross the Omignon river by a single plank thrown across a weir. Until they are blown up one rather forgets ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose
... speed him on his way, a pair of cast-iron spurs weighing six pounds avoirdupois, with rowels eight inches in diameter, manufactured in this island for the use of barbarous men beyond the sea. The wretched mud-and-grass building was surrounded by a foss crossed by a plank drawbridge; outside of the enclosure twelve or fourteen saddled horses were standing, and from the loud noise of talk and laughter in the bar I conjectured that a goodly company of rough frontiersmen were already making merry at that early hour. It was ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... have noticed it, John. If there was anything of that sort it must be outside. However, we will take a good look round the yard to-morrow. The warehouse is strongly built, and I don't believe that any plank could be taken off and put back again, time after time, without making a noise that would be heard in the house. What do you ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... balance on hand of two dollars and fifty cents, and he had nearly half a day yet before him. He felt rich—nay, more than that, he felt like a man who, sinking in a shoreless ocean, suddenly catches a plank that bears him up until land ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... to the end of Whitehall's visit yet. When I went back I took down the beautiful lava jug, and inside I found his card. On the back was written, "You have gone into action, sir. It may be your fate to sink or to swim, but it can never be your degradation to strike. Die on the last plank and be damned to you, or come into port with ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... life. The steamer was making full preparations for the embarkation of passengers to a distant city; and the wharf was crowded with bales of goods, casks of water, cabs, trucks, &c. Business men were hurrying to and fro, sailors were shouting to each other, and friends were hastily clambering up the plank and springing on deck to remain a few minutes longer, if possible, with those from, whom they were so soon to be severed, "it might be for years, and it ...
— Woman As She Should Be - or, Agnes Wiltshire • Mary E. Herbert
... Anthony where we had lived for a short time, to Faribault and settled in Walcott where we secured a log house and a claim for $75.00. This was on Mud Creek. While at St. Anthony my father had made us such furniture as we needed. From the saw mill he got plank fourteen feet in length, which he cut into strips. He then bored holes in the corners and inserted pieces of pine, taken out of the river, for legs, and thus we were provided with stools. For tables we used our trunks. We slept ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... carefully, expecting the owners to come for it, but they never did. And he would try to get the idleness and sloth out of the sailors of that ship by compelling, them to take invigorating exercise and a bath. He called it "walking a plank." All the pupils liked it. At any rate, they never found any fault with it after trying it. When the owners were late coming for their ships, the Admiral always burned them, so that the insurance money should not be lost. At last this fine old tar was cut down in the fulness ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... and this is the Gory Griffin. If you have a cargo of raisins and fig-paste and cream dates, hand them over; otherwise, prepare to walk the plank this instant!" ...
— The Merryweathers • Laura E. Richards
... anything else, declaring that all this fuss about him only annoyed him. Sonia wrote further that in prison he shared the same room with the rest, that she had not seen the inside of their barracks, but concluded that they were crowded, miserable and unhealthy; that he slept on a plank bed with a rug under him and was unwilling to make any other arrangement. But that he lived so poorly and roughly, not from any plan or design, but simply from inattention ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... for it is only by cheating that one can get it." But all the time he was in the hospital he was tormented by the fear that he would lose during his absence his wretched place as Count Tolstoy's secretary, and which, wretched as it was, nevertheless was something,—was as a plank in the great ocean to one who, it gone, saw nothing but water around him, and he no swimmer. He did lose the situation, because one day he stayed at home to finish a poem, instead of appearing at his desk. The misfortune ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... daughters-in-law marched into the ark dragging after them some wiry, emaciated debris of the Jardin des Plantes, which looked as if they had not eaten for a week. The amount of whipping and poking with sticks which was necessary to get them up the plank was amazing; I think they had had either too few or too many rehearsals. But they were all finally pushed in. Then commenced the rain—a real pouring cats-and- dogs kind of rain, with thunder and lightning and the stage ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... wheelbarrow upon which I had a large stone. The force of his fall threw both stone and wheelbarrow into the river. The man behind me, seeing what was happening, flung himself face down over his wheelbarrow, and in the dark, grabbed me as I was going over the plank into the river. He caught me by one of my arms and held me until help came and I was pulled out. I was hanging from his hands about fifty to seventy-five ...
— Personal Experiences of S. O. Susag • S. O. Susag
... the stones under M. de Mirabeau's garden wall. Perhaps by this time he had been found; perhaps one of the marquis's liveried lackeys, or a passing idler, or a woman with a market-basket had come upon him; perhaps even now he was being borne away on a plank to be identified. And here were we, knocking, knocking, as if we innocently expected him to open to us. I had a chill dread that suddenly he would open to us. The door would swing wide and show him pale and bloody, with the broken sword in his heart. At ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... best to have you marched out from a cell in the Roquette prison some fine morning, about dawn, between a jailer and a priest, with your legs roped together and your shirt cut away at the back of the neck and then to have you bound against an upright plank and tipped forward gently under a forty-pound knife'—you see I know the details—and then, phsst! the knife falls and behold the head of De Heidelmann-Bruck in one basket and his body in another! That would be ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... his company and bade them lay hands on the tackling, and they hearkened to his call. So they raised the mast of pine tree and set it in the hole of the cross plank, and made it fast with forestays, and hauled up the white sails with twisted ropes of oxhide. And the wind filled the belly of the sail, and the dark wave seethed loudly round the stem of the running ship, and she fleeted over the wave, accomplishing her path. ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... he said, glancing back at the little girl. "There's a ship and I guess there isn't anybody aboard. Anyhow, if there is, we'll fight our way over the bulwarks, kill half the crew, and make the others walk the plank. That is what ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill
... came, this old man, bent and blear-eyed, was swept along the gangway like a chip on the tide. In pure lightness of heart a sailor, posted at the head of the plank, expedited him with a kick. "That'll do for good-bye ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... people to await him at the gate of the dock-yard, and passed on, saluting those whom he met, to the place where the Portuguese flag indicated the gondola of Lopez de Galle, which was prepared to receive him. They threw a carpet across the plank upon which Mary was to step in passing into the gondola. Mary, her father, and Geronimo entered the boat; the six oars dipped simultaneously into the water, and, pushed by the strong arms of the Portuguese sailors, the ...
— The Amulet • Hendrik Conscience
... and the illuminated and consoling household motto. Most of the hotels are in the town, at considerable distance from the ocean, and the majestic old sea, which can be monotonous but never vulgar, is barricaded from the town by five or six miles of stark-naked plank walk, rows on rows of bath closets, leagues of flimsy carpentry-work, in the way of cheap-John shops, tin-type booths, peep-shows, go-rounds, shooting-galleries, pop-beer and cigar shops, restaurants, barber ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... becoming warm and vivid. There had been no frost after all—or, at most, merely a white trace in the shadow—on a fallen plank here and there—but not enough to freeze the ground. And, in the sunshine, it all quickly turned to dew, and glittered and sparkled in a million hues and tints like gems—like that handful of jewels she had poured into her father's joined palms—yesterday—there at the ghostly edge ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... remember, pirates always had a plank for people to 'walk,' you know, an' used to 'swing ...
— My Lady Caprice • Jeffrey Farnol
... the "Southern Republic;" the last bell has sounded, the last belated trunk has been trundled over the plank; and we are off, the calliope screaming "Dixie" like ten thousand devils, the crowds on the bank waving us ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... worked by the mill, with a one, two, or three horse power, according to the length of the lever, and the diameter of the mill. Sky, or water coolers, in general, are square vessels, made of the best two inch pine plank, properly jointed, from twenty to twenty-five feet square, laid on strong joists sufficiently close, and trunneled down (after pressing) with wooden trunnels from end to end, to prevent starting or warping; the joists are supported by a couple of strong beams, equally spaced; the sides ...
— The American Practical Brewer and Tanner • Joseph Coppinger
... rejoiced. We had reason to behold the Lord in all this, and to glorify Him as we did silently in our hearts. The wife arose and offered us a little to eat of what she had, and afterwards gave me some deer skins, but they were as dry and hard as a plank. I lay down upon them, and crept under them, but was little covered and still less warmed by them. My companion went to lie with a servant in his bunk, but he did not remain there long before a heavy rain ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... no center-board, dependent on her draught and heavy keel to hold her on the wind; stanch and seaworthy, sheathed with stout plank and ribbed with seasoned timber, designed to keep afloat in the wickedest weather brewed by the foul-tempered German Ocean. Withal her lines were fine and clean; for all her beam she was calculated to nose narrowly into the wind ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... a big splinter in my finger," cried another soldier, who was on the roof, and had just broken off a plank; "I must draw it out and put it back, ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... have had the clouds below us, as they are on Penang Hill. The path up the mountain—if path it can be called—is almost a staircase of tumbled rocks, and requires both strength and agility to climb. It was quite beyond me; but I was carried on a man's back, sitting on a bit of plank, with a strip of cloth fastened round my waist and across the man's forehead, my back to his back. The Dyaks are famous mountaineers, their bare feet cling to the stones, or notched trunks of trees thrown ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... villages, clearing the forests, and turning the prairies into farms and gardens. Some went in wagons, some on horseback; great numbers even went on foot, pushing their children and household goods in handcarts, in wheelbarrows, in little box carts on four small wheels made of plank. [9] ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... days ago—I went to see Tengga. I found him by the shore trimming a plank with a small hatchet while a slave held an umbrella over his head. He is amusing himself in building a boat just now. He threw his hatchet down to meet me and led me by the hand to a shady spot. He told me frankly he had sent out two good swimmers to observe the stranded vessel. ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... could chat. Any pauses occurring, he was the one guilty of them; she did not allow them to be barrier chasms, or 'strids' for the leap with effort; she crossed them like the mountain maid over a gorge's plank—kept her tones perfectly. Her Madge and Mr. Gower Woodseer made a conversible topic. She was inquisitive for accounts of Spanish history and the land ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... strong west winds that drive dust-clouds through its rutted streets. As a rule, during the remaining day or two the temperature sharply falls, thunder crashes between downpours of heavy rain, and the wet plank sidewalks provide a badly-needed refuge ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... is also fleeting, and, not being millionnaires, with the luxury of a run across the Atlantic at command, let us make what we can out of what we have. It is very probable that architecture, too, is a sore subject to aspiring Young America, who turns discontentedly from the stucco and pine-plank tracery of the new cathedral of St. Aerian. But let Young America go out to the meadows, and discover for himself a group of young elms. There is one I know of, not unattainable by very moderate pedestrianism from the same seaport before alluded to, where a most exquisite arrangement ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... plain enough; so long as he lay perfectly still there was nothing to fear, for the reptile's visit was neither inimical nor in search of food. It had evidently glided up the plank slope and through the gangway to escape from the chilling wet ground, then made its way into the cabin and found the young man's berth pleasantly attractive. But Oliver felt that the slightest movement on his part might ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... again at the cottage at the top of the brew," he shouted. "An ould widda lives there with her gel." At the summit of the hill, just under South Barrule, with Cronk-ny-arrey-Lhaa to the west, I came upon a disused lead mine, called the old Cross Vein, its shaft open save for a plank or two thrown across it, and filled with water almost to the surface of the ground. And there, under the lee of the roofless walls of the ruined engine-house, stood the tiny one-story cottage where I had been ...
— The Little Manx Nation - 1891 • Hall Caine
... was in command of the situation. Making sure that the submarine was securely moored ashore, he retreated again to the deck of the U-boat, drawing after him the heavy plank that had been laid down as a gangplank. The battle on the outskirts of the village was still raging with fury. Shells were bursting all around the submarine. Running to starboard, Jack took up his position ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Submarine Fleet • James R. Driscoll
... not such a very big boy, though he was perhaps fourteen years old and tall of his age. He stood upon the plank-walk which ran at the front of the house, and leaned against the porch with his hands in his pockets. He was a slender, lithe boy, well dressed in a suit of fine white linen. He had a dark, spirited face, and long-lashed dark eyes, but, notwithstanding ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Yankee, "plank the ready!" The landlord wagged his finger steady, While his left hand, as well as able, Conveyed a purse upon the table, "Tom! with the money let's be off!" This made the landlord only scoff. He heard them running down the stair, But was not tempted from his chair; Thought he, "The fools! I'll ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... me from telling you," said Mr. Ashton, "that Mr. Carrington has died since I left there. But you will hardly win this fair, haughty lady, unless you can plank about a million. But there are other faces quite as pretty, I think. There is a Julia Middleton, who is attending school. She is a great beauty, but, if report speaks truly, she would keep you busily employed in curbing her ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... where invariably, winter and summer, a chilly wind was blowing; here was where the road to Spencer's branched off; here was Bussy's old place, where at one time there were so many dogs; here was Delmue's cabin, where unlicensed whiskey used to be sold; here was the plank bridge with its one rotten board; and here the flat overgrown with manzanita, where he ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... feet five inches in height, consequently a man who could rest his elbow upon it must be at least six feet high. The mark of his hand proves that I am not mistaken. On seeing that he had brushed away the snow which covered the plank, I asked myself what he had used; I thought that it might be his cap, and the mark left by the peak proves that I was right. Finally, if I have discovered the color and the material of his overcoat, it is only because when he wiped the wet board, some splinters of the wood tore off a few tiny ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
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