"Anvil" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and promised to give a decisive answer in the morning. O'Mooney saw that this man was too great a fool to be a knave; his perturbation was evidently the perturbation of a dupe, not of an accomplice: Queasy was made to "be an anvil, not a hammer." In the midst of his own disappointment, our good-natured Hibernian really pitied ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... repeatedly heated in a forge, the heat of which is urged by a pair of double bellows of a very simple construction, being made of two goats' skins; the tubes from which unite, before they enter the forge, and supply a constant and very regular blast. The hammer, forceps, and anvil, are all very simple, and the workmanship (particularly in the formation of knives and spears) is not destitute of merit. The iron, indeed, is hard and brittle, and requires much labour before it can be made ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... such as are got in assaying most gold ores, are placed on a polished steel anvil and flattened by one or two blows with a hammer. The flattened discs are heated to dull redness on a clean cupel and are then ready for parting. Somewhat larger buttons may be similarly treated, but they should be annealed (i.e. heated to redness and allowed to cool) during the flattening. ...
— A Textbook of Assaying: For the Use of Those Connected with Mines. • Cornelius Beringer and John Jacob Beringer
... of Smyrna, understood better than most of the others. It was on him as a common anvil that the two of them had pounded their mutual spite cool. Hiram, suddenly reappearing with a plug hat and a pet elephant, after twenty years of wandering, had won promptly the hand of Widow Snell, nee Amanda Purkis, ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... paid. If self-sustaining strength can be acquired from example, I ought to have got good. But my nature is not hers; I could not make it so though I were to submit it seventy times seven to the furnace of affliction, and discipline it for an age under the hammer and anvil of toil and self-sacrifice. Perhaps if I was like her I should not admire her so much as I do. She is somewhat absolute, though quite unconsciously so; but she is likewise kind, with an affection at once abrupt and constant, whose sincerity you cannot doubt. It was delightful to sit near her ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... well, for you will never feel the crown on your brows, good uncle! You are ground between the Spanish hammer and the Bearnais anvil; there will soon be nothing ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... majority, on which it can count with safety. Majorities are breaking up and dissolving; and the ever changing course, in Germany, especially, undermines the last vestige of confidence that the ruling class had in themselves. To-day one set is anvil, the other the hammer; to-morrow it is the other way. The one tears down what the other painfully builds up. The confusion is ever greater; the discontent ever more lasting; the causes of friction multiply and consume in a few months more energies than years did formerly. Along with all ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... or some such horror. Myriad bits of ordnance are continually pouring in and pouring out, and the object is to track them, and balance them, and pursue every elusive atom from start to finish. It may be expendible, like paint, or non-expendible, like an anvil. You feel despairingly that a pound of paint, born at Kimberley, and now at Mafeking, is disappearing somewhere and somehow; but you have to endow it with a fictitious immortality. An anvil you feel safer about, but then you have to use it somewhere, and account for its ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... the kindling for Mother; and neither of you need feel that you are useless nor idle. Part of these gold claims are yours, and in your own names, and you can both make short 'mushing' trips of inspection over the country when you like; though the new railroad up Anvil will be finished in a few weeks, and then you can ride. Under no consideration must either of you think for one moment of buying steamer tickets back to the States inside of a year. At the end of that time we will be taking out so much gold that you will ...
— The Trail of a Sourdough - Life in Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... that dream. She says, "I dreamed that every one in the world was dead excepting myself, and that upon me rested the responsibility of making a wagon wheel. The village street remained as usual, the village blacksmith shop was 'all there,' even a glowing fire upon the forge, and the anvil in its customary place near the door, but no human being was within sight. They had all gone around the edge of the hill to the village cemetery, and I alone remained in the deserted world. I stood in the blacksmith shop pondering on how to begin, and never once knew ...
— Modern Americans - A Biographical School Reader for the Upper Grades • Chester Sanford
... was fairer than they were. And there was quite a friendship between him and Maria, the smith's daughter. She was glad to talk to him and to listen to his stories when he came to the smithy. She helped her father in his work. She blew the bellows and prepared the shoes for the anvil. Her hair was as red as the fire and her arms round and strong. She was a sweet maid to speak to, and even the old priest liked to pinch her arms when she kissed ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... like the Baris, are excellent blacksmiths, producing a result that would astonish an English workman, considering the rough nature of their tools, which are confined to a hammer, anvil, and tongs; the latter formed of a cleft-stick of green wood, while the two former are stones of various sizes. Their bellows consist of two pots about a foot deep; from the bottom of each is an earthenware pipe about two feet long, the points of which are ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... produced. To a child it seems that the blacksmith has made a horse-shoe, and that therefore the horse-shoe is his. But the blacksmith knows that the horse-shoe does not belong solely to him, but to his landlord, to the rate collector and taxgatherer, to the men from whom he bought the iron and anvil and the coals, leaving only a scrap of its value for himself; and this scrap he has to exchange with the butcher and baker and the clothier for the things that he really appropriates as living tissue or its wrappings, paying for all of them more than their cost; for these fellow ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... burst forth in never-dying song while guiding the ploughshare. Poor Heinrich Heine, neglected and in poverty, from his "mattress grave" of suffering in Paris added literary laurels to the wreath of his German Fatherland. In America Elihu Burritt, while attending the anvil, made himself a master of a score of languages and became the literary lion of his ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... company of two writers. One of these could not get anything published at all except in the toy magazines, which paid little and late and died early. The other writer could get published, but not sold. Both were young and needed only to pound their irons on the anvil to get them hot, but they blamed the world for being cold to true art. In time they would make the sparks fly and would be in their turn assailed as mere blacksmiths by the next line of younger apprentices. They were at present ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... scaffolding for the fireworks and benches for the audience. General Banks urged me to remain over the 4th of March, to participate in the ceremonies, which he explained would include the performance of the "Anvil Chorus" by all the bands of his army, and during the performance the church-bells were to be rung, and cannons were to be fired by electricity. I regarded all such ceremonies as out of place at a time when it seemed to me every hour and every minute were due to ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... seasons while the earth shall wear Its leafy summers, ere its core grows cold And the moist life of all that breathes shall die; Or as the new-born seer, perchance more wise, Would have us deem, before its growing mass, Pelted with stardust, atoned with meteor-balls, Heats like a hammered anvil, till at last Man and his works and all that stirred itself Of its own motion, in the fiery glow Turns to a flaming vapor, and our orb Shines a new sun for ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... and so great: small in the eyes of the world, great in his own estimation. When the tones burst from him like sparks from an anvil, he was a god. When he stood in the dark court behind the City Theatre waiting for the final chorus of "Fidelio" to penetrate the wall and reach his grateful ears, he was an outcast. Fountains of music rustled all about him. He looked into the eyes of the children and there was melody; he gazed ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... 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
... with infinite care, in the centre there lay a set of smith's tools, crudely fashioned and well worn, tongs and a heavy hammer and a small anvil. ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... the climax of the river's madness, the object of its angry sport would be dashed against the cliff, and torn, and crushed, and hammered by the terrific weight of the rushing flood against that rocky anvil, into a ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright
... Seated in a large wooden chair, and surrounded by attendants bearing banners, torches, and weapons, he was borne about the town on the shoulders of six men, visiting numerous public-houses and the blacksmiths and officers of the dockyard. Before him he had a wooden anvil, and in his hands a pair of tongs and a wooden hammer, the insignia of ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... boy may slay the dragon and win for him the Nibelung treasure. The drama opens in Mime's hut in the depths of the forest. The dwarf is engaged in forging a sword for Siegfried, complaining the while that the ungrateful boy always dashes the swords which he makes to pieces upon the anvil as though they were toys. Siegfried now comes in, blithe and boisterous, and treats Mime's new sword like its predecessors, blaming the unfortunate smith for his incompetence. Mime reproaches Siegfried for his ingratitude, reminding him of the care with ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... furious bound, overturning three or four prisoners who separated him from Germain, he sprung upon Skeleton, and struck him on his head, between the eyes, such a torrent of blows with his fists that the sound was like a hammer upon an anvil. ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... vitriol, as prepared by myself on my farm in Calvert in the following way: The bones, (which we buy in the neighborhood at 50 cents per 112 lbs.) after breaking them with a small sledge hammer on an old anvil, we put at the rate of three bushels in half a hogshead, and apply to that quantity 75 lbs. oil of vitriol, filling up the half hogshead to within eight inches of the top with water, letting them remain, ...
— Guano - A Treatise of Practical Information for Farmers • Solon Robinson
... firm like a smitten anvil under the blows of a hammer; be strong as an athlete of God, it is part of a great athlete to ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... because I have looked into it, tried it, found it healthful and sufficient, and thus know that it will stand the stress of life. We may be right or wrong in our estimate of Mr. Carlyle, but we cannot be mistaken in supposing that on this kind of anvil have all truly great men been fashioned, and of metal thus honest ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... of terrible consequence to this kingdom, by their power with those who were in office, and by their arts in managing or deluding others with oaths, affability, and even with dinners. If Wood's brass had in those times been upon the anvil, it is obvious enough to conceive what methods would have been taken. Depending persons would have been told in plain terms, that it was a "service expected from them, under pain of the public business being put into more complying ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... to force her way through; the javelins rattled on her head like hammers on an anvil. She began to yell like a bird ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... providentially appointed to be the newly wedded wife of the village blacksmith, the woman persuaded her husband to come out with her, bringing some tools of his trade, a hammer, a chisel, a small anvil.... "My fetters"—the book says—"were struck off on the banks of the stream, in the starlight of a calm night by an athletic, taciturn young man of the people, kneeling at my feet, while the woman like a liberating genius stood by with clasped hands." ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... down From Arac's arm, as from a giant's flail, The large blows rained, as here and everywhere He rode the mellay, lord of the ringing lists, And all the plain,—brand, mace, and shaft, and shield— Shocked, like an iron-clanging anvil banged With hammers; till I thought, can this be he From Gama's dwarfish loins? if this be so, The mother makes us most—and in my dream I glanced aside, and saw the palace-front Alive with fluttering scarfs and ladies' eyes, And highest, among the statues, statuelike, Between a cymballed ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... their shields smooth and make their spearheads glitter with [627-659]fat lard, and grind their axes on the whetstone: rejoicingly they advance under their standards and hear the trumpet note. Five great cities set up the anvil and sharpen the sword, strong Atina and proud Tibur, Ardea and Crustumeri, and turreted Antemnae. They hollow out head-gear to guard them, and plait wickerwork round shield-bosses; others forge breastplates of brass or smooth greaves of flexible silver. To this is come the honour of share ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... stuff come off the other landing craft. A dozen pairs of four-foot wagon wheels, with axles. Hoes, in bundles. Scythe blades. A hand forge, with a crank-driven fan blower, and a hundred and fifty pound anvil, and sledges and cutters and ...
— Naudsonce • H. Beam Piper
... anvil was ringing; but whoever had seen how often the young blacksmith struck the iron falsely, would have easily seen that he thought of something besides the hammer he held in ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... "keep his piece nine years," or ninety and nine, till he has made it as musical as he can—at least, as musical as his other performances. Not that we counsel dilatory and piecemeal composition. The thought must be struck off in the passion of the moment; the sword-blade must go red-hot to the anvil, and be forged in a few seconds: true; but after the forging, long and weary polishing and grinding must follow, before your sword-blade will cut. And melody is what makes poetry cut; what gives it its life, its power, its magic influence, on the ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various
... upon the Wheel of Time, and yet is bidden rage and strive, the adoring acquiescence of Eastern Fatalism mingling with the Western gospel of individual energy. And all this complex and manifold ethical appeal is conveyed in verse of magnificent volume and resonance, effacing by the swift recurrent anvil crash of its rhythm any suggestion that the acquiescence ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... Give him a good anvil, let him deal sound blows on the irons for the pier, repeated and strong, and the work ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... spur to a land of no name, out-racing the storm-wind; We leap to the infinite dark like sparks from the anvil. Thou leadest, O God! All's well with Thy troopers ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... a human science; so that we no longer study it in quest of the Guaith Voeths, but to trace out some of the secrets of descent and destiny; and as we study, we think less of Sir Bernard Burke and more of Mr. Galton. Not only do our character and talents lie upon the anvil and receive their temper during generations; but the very plot of our life's story unfolds itself on a scale of centuries, and the biography of the man is only an episode in the epic of the family. From ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Charles V, the nephew of Queen Catherine, took up cudgels in his aunt's behalf and threatened Clement with dire penalties if he nullified the marriage. The pope complained truthfully that he was between the anvil and the hammer. There was little for him to do except to temporize and to delay decision as ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... of device or of legend appeared only on one side. The other side bore an indent which is known as the punch-mark. This mark is commonly a square figure divided into four smaller squares by lines resembling somewhat a right cross. It is the indent of the spike in the anvil on which the ball of metal was laid when being struck. Later, the coins were made thinner, and were struck with double dies. From that time both sides of the coin received an impression. The upper side continued to show the ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 6, June, 1886, Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 6, June, 1886 • Various
... Caleb care! If he had ever trod his ancestral acres either for pleasure or profit he might in time have "stomped out" the whiteweed, so the neighbors said, for he had the family foot, the size of an anvil; but he much preferred a sedentary life, and the whiteweed went on seeding itself from year ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... up to the blacksmith shop where Daddy Chip was hammering tunefully upon the anvil, and delivered his ultimatum from ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... of a child, while the glass was not in the slightest degree injured or disturbed. The labor saved by this hammer is immense. One man sits perched up on the frame to direct it, and another stands below to guide the iron on the anvil. The great long bar, white with heat, is pulled out of the furnace, laid on the massive piece of iron under the frame, and, with a dull, heavy sound, down conies the hammer, swiftly or slowly, according to the wishes of the director. From the forge and the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... pressing; the menace unmistakable. The Reconstruction of the Empire was on the anvil; what was to be India's place therein? The Dominions were proclaimed as partners; was India to remain a Dependency? Mr. Bonar Law bade the Dominions strike while the iron was hot; was India to wait till it was ...
— The Case For India • Annie Besant
... choosing she has borne the hardest blows—a poor little buffer state thrust in between great and truculent neighbors. To strike at one another they must strike Belgium. By the accident of geography and the caprice of boundary lines she has always been the anvil for their hammers. Jemmapes and Waterloo, to cite two especially conspicuous examples among great Continental battles, were fought on her soil. Indeed, there is scarcely an inch of her for the possession ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... the centre of the primitive civilization, had soon an expectant group in its widely flaring doors, for the smith had had enough of the war, and had come back to wistfully, hopelessly haunt his anvil like some uneasy ghost visiting familiar scenes in which he no more bears a part;—a minie-ball had shattered his stanch hammer-arm, and his duties were now merely advisory to a clumsy apprentice. This was a half-witted fellow, a giant in strength, but not to be trusted ...
— The Raid Of The Guerilla - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... passeth his time by night as by day; they that cut gravings of signets, and his diligence is to make great variety; he will set his heart to preserve likeness in his portraiture, and will be wakeful to finish his work. So is the smith sitting by the anvil, and considering the unwrought iron; the vapour of the fire will waste his flesh, and in the heat of the furnace will he wrestle with his work; the noise of the hammer will be ever in his ear, and his eyes are upon the pattern of the vessel; he will set his heart upon perfecting his works, and ...
— Select Masterpieces of Biblical Literature • Various
... excitement,—in the few minutes of our interview the picture was fixed, and remains so. His manner was quiet, natural, and unassuming: he received us with the simple good-breeding which a gentleman always possesses, whether we find him on a throne or beside an anvil. Not a man to assert his claim loudly, or to notice injustice or neglect by a single spoken word; but one to take quietly success or failure, in the serenity of a mood habitually untouched by ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... Dover that Dickens went when he was labouring with unusual difficulty over Bleak House, and lamenting his inability to "grind sparks out of this dull anvil". At Dover, on his Second Series of Readings, he found "the audience with the greatest sense of humour", and "they laughed with such really cordial enjoyment, when Squeers read the boy's letters, that the contagion" was irresistible even ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin
... of these lessons he lighted his pipe with a sulphur match which tainted the morning air and offended Ricuzzu; but almost immediately we came to a forge and the blacksmith was striking a piece of iron on his anvil. ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... mention, all the estates were long or day in the church for to pray. And when matins and the first mass was done, there was seen in the churchyard, against the high altar, a great stone four square, like unto a marble stone; and in midst thereof was like an anvil of steel a foot on high, and therein stuck a fair sword naked by the point, and letters there were written in gold about the sword that said thus:—Whoso pulleth out this sword of this stone and anvil, is rightwise king born of all England. ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume I (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... toys in this picture are mostly machine-made, and their uses can be easily seen. But the cup and ball, and the 'two bears,' as the strange figures hammering on an anvil in the top left-hand corner are called, are made by hand. The latter comes all the way from a little village in Austria, and the figures are cut out by the villagers in their homes, before being fastened ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... had reason to be proud of his work. The introduction of wing-made sounds in the middle of a vocal performance was of itself a stroke of something like genius. It put me in mind of the firing of cannons as an accompaniment to the Anvil Chorus. Why should a creature of such gifts be named for his bodily dimensions, or the shape of his tail? Why not Quiscalus gilmorius, ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... up. For my own failure I should not sorrow: my concern would be for the one who has so carefully shaped me after a pattern of her own. However else one may feel, one must be fair to the ambitions of others, even though one is the mere material that is heated and beaten into form on the anvil of another's will. But I am ripe for revolt. The devil is in me,—a restrained, quiet, well-appearing devil, but all the more ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... satisfactory uniformity in scores, it is essential that the operator be skilled in the use of the cracking machine and use continuous care in applying the necessary pressure and in holding the nut in the anvils. Undercracking or overcracking, reversing the ends of the nut in the anvil or failure to hold the nut vertical may affect ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Thirty-Fourth Annual Report 1943 • Various
... the white hot bar to his anvil, and began to hammer. He despised girls, as a rule, and their ways. Decidedly Lizzie annoyed him; and yet as he worked he could not help glancing at her now and then, as she sat and watched him. By-and-by he saw that her eyes were full ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... like a Populist an' an anarchist an' a big bullhead gen'rally. Ye bring up two or three Jew men, an' think f'r to scare us with thim. But look here. Supposin' a man comes into my place an' lays down on th' anvil a silver dollar, an' I give it a wallop ...
— Mr. Dooley in Peace and in War • Finley Peter Dunne
... thee, my worthy friend, For the lesson thou hast taught! Thus at the flaming forge of life, Our fortunes must be wrought; Thus, on its sounding anvil, shaped Each ...
— Graded Memory Selections • Various
... I forthwith set about my work. Selecting a piece of iron which I thought would serve my purpose, I placed it in the fire, and, plying the bellows in a furious manner, soon made it hot; then seizing it with the tongs, I laid it on my anvil, and began to beat it with my hammer, according to the rules of my art. The dingle resounded with my strokes. Belle sat still, and occasionally smiled, but suddenly started up, and retreated towards her encampment, on a spark, which ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... hero which went beyond grown-up credence altogether. But there are some few narratives that survive the application of the laws of evidence. For instance, it is recorded that, taking advantage of the temporary absence of a rival smith, he carried away an anvil under his cloak without exciting suspicion that he was ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... tempest grows strong by resistance, The arm at the anvil gains muscular power, And firm self-reliance, that seeks no assistance, Goes onward, rejoicing, through sunshine and shower; For life is a struggle, to try and to prove us, And true hearts grow stronger by labour and care, While Hope, like a seraph, still whispers ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... Bui, and a combat ensued, which has scarcely had its equal in all the battles of the Northmen. Two great berserks of Jomsburg—Havard the Hewer and Aslak Rockskull—vaulted over the gunwale of Hakon's ship and made tremendous havoc, until an Icelander seized an anvil that lay on the deck and dashed it against Aslak's head. Havard had both his feet cut off, but fought on furiously, standing on his knees. The spears and arrows whizzed about the head of Earl Hakon, and his coat of mail was so rent and ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton
... have a battle to fight! Come and dine somewhere and we will get out our batteries. You are to be procureur-du-roi at Mantes, and I am to be prefect; but we must seem to have nothing to do with the election, for don't you see, we are between the hammer and the anvil. Simon is the candidate of a party which wants to overturn the present ministry and may succeed; but for men as intelligent as you and I there is but one course ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... shall be as hard as a stone, and as firm as a smith's anvil." (Septuagint, "He hath stood immovable as ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... ground with his face downwards, the officers of justice sent away two of their number, who speedily returned with a blacksmith's anvil and forehammer. On this they placed one of their victim's ankles, and Flaggan now saw, with a sickening heart, that they were about to break it with the ponderous hammer. One blow sufficed to crush the bones in pieces, and drew from the ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... should run away from that instead of running to it," remarked the blacksmith, "no one there learns how to use the hammer and anvil ...
— Pixy's Holiday Journey • George Lang
... loose Lowland greatcoat, and ragged tartan trews or pantaloons. All around looked singularly wild and unpropitious. Beneath the brow of the incumbent rock was a charcoal fire, on which there was a still working, with bellows, pincers, hammers, a movable anvil, and other smith's tools; three guns, with two or three sacks and barrels, were disposed against the wall of rock, under shelter of the superincumbent crag; a dirk and two swords, and a Lochaber axe, lay ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... laid thy keel, What Workman wrought thy ribs of steel, Who made each mast and sail and rope, What anvil rang, what hammers beat, In what a forge and what a heat Were shaped the ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... is thine! ... How full of dislocated word-puzzles and similes gone mad! Now, as I live, expect no mercy from me this time!".. and he shook his head threateningly,—"For if the public news sheet will serve me as mine anvil, I will so pound thee in pieces with the sledge-hammer of my criticism, that, by the Ship of the Sun! ... for once Al-Kyns shall be moved to laughter at thee! Mark me, good tuner-up of tinkling foolishness! ... I will so choose out and handle thy feeblest lines that they ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... side of an axe for an anvil, and the hatchet for a hammer, Sam was soon very busy forging his wrought nails into sharp arrow points, holding the hot iron in his wooden pincers. Among the things that Sam had thought it worth while to learn something about, was blacksmithing, ...
— Captain Sam - The Boy Scouts of 1814 • George Cary Eggleston
... that speaks doth gripe the hearer's wrist; Whilst he that hears makes fearful action With wrinkled brows, with nods, with rolling eyes. I saw a smith stand with his hammer, thus, The whilst his iron did on the anvil cool, With open mouth swallowing a tailor's news; Who, with his shears and measure in his hand, Standing on slippers,—which his nimble haste Had falsely thrust upon contrary feet,— Told of a many thousand warlike ...
— King John • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... were of course indistinguishable, and yet the movement and attitude of the groups conveyed pathos and patient endurance as well as any individual speech or gesture in the ordinary theatre. Some groups carried hammer and anvil, and others staggered under enormous blocks of stone. Love for the ballet has perhaps made the Russians understand the art of moving groups of actors in unison. As I watched these processions climbing the steps in apparently careless and spontaneous fashion, and yet producing so graceful ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell
... shadow of Anvil Mountain, the motor boat ran up to a little wharf, almost completely hidden in greenery, and there Cecil and the boy landed. Stuart did not fail to observe that the motor boat engineer needed no directions as to the place of landing. ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... eat, the Dog woke up, and wagged his tail, as if he would ask for a share of his meal. His master one day, pretending to be angry, and shaking his stick at him, said: "You wretched little sluggard! what shall I do to you? While I am hammering on the anvil, you sleep on the mat, and when I begin to eat after my toil, you wake up and wag your tail for food. Do you not know that labor is the source of every blessing, and that none but those who work are ...
— Aesop's Fables - A New Revised Version From Original Sources • Aesop
... last turn in the lane, she heard the ring of Daniel Greensmith's hammer on the anvil, and a few minutes' more walking brought her in sight of the smith himself, who laid down his hammer and shaded his eyes to ...
— Our Little Lady - Six Hundred Years Ago • Emily Sarah Holt
... County area. It roughly exceeded Types B, D and E by a 2:1 ratio. Type C exceeded Types B, D and E with a ratio of about 7:5 in frequency of occurrence. Types B and D were the two most easily cracked nut forms when using a hammer and anvil for a cracking device. It should be noted at this time that all of the abnormal fruit types were found in conjunction with normal fruit types. Thus, one individual tree used as a collection might produce both a normal nut type (A, B, C, D or E) and an abnormal ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various
... and lays my heart, all heated, On the hard anvil, minded so Into his own fair shape to beat it With his great hammer, blow on blow: And yet I whisper, As God will! And at his heaviest ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... argol for fluxes; while for reducing lead I had recourse to the lining of a tea-chest, which lead contains no silver—John Chinaman takes good care of that. My mortar was a jam tin, without top or bottom, placed on an anvil; the pestle a short steel drill. The blacksmith at Mundi Mundi Station made me a small wrought iron crucible, also a pair of bent tongs from a piece of fencing-wire. The manager gave me a small common red flower pot for a muffle, ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... this last clause of the Pacification of Ghent shows that the Calvinists were bent on exacting all the advantages of the situation they had so heroically conquered and that the moderates of the Southern provinces still found themselves placed between the hammer of Spanish domination and the anvil of Calvinist sectarianism. ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts
... Catherines.—Pass close south of the Shambles and steer for Anvil Point, thence hug the coast, ...
— The Crisis of the Naval War • John Rushworth Jellicoe
... Alfred Bunn (whose disinterestedness has passed into a theatrical proverb), arrests the arm of his friend of the Auction Mart in its descent. Attend to his bidding. Do not—oh! do not wait till the vulcan of the Bartholomew-lane smithy lets fall his hammer upon the anvil of pleasure, to announce ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... on these occasions must have been a weird sight; though one did not mark that at the time. The poacher crept from the darkness into the glaring smithy light; for in country parts the anvil might sometimes be heard clanging at all hours of the night. As a rule, every face was blackened; and it was this, I suppose, rather than the fact that dark nights were chosen, that gave the gangs the name of black-fishers. Other disguises were resorted to; one of the commonest being ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... husband to have Theophile Gautier direct this part of the Presse in order not to contend with Balzac, but the novelist was so unreasonable that M. de Girardin had to intervene. "My beautiful Queen," once wrote Theophile to Delphine, "if this continues, rather than be caught between the anvil Emile and the hammer Balzac, I shall return my apron to you. I prefer planting cabbage or raking the walls of your garden." To this, Madame de Girardin replied: "I have a gardener with whom I am very well satisfied, thank you; continue ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... feet of the St. John, a trefoil "in guise of a little tree." And note here the difference between artistic and mechanical coinage. The Florentines, using pure gold, and thin, can strike their coin anywhere, with only a wooden anvil, and their engraver is ready on the instant to make such change in the stamp as may record any new triumph. Consider the vigour, popularity, pleasantness of an art of coinage thus ductile to ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... met him before the blow could descend, and they went down together upon the hard stones. Again Sebastian smote, with his massive hands wrapped in the chain and his wrists encased in steel, and this time it was as if Don Pablo's head had been caught between a hammer and an anvil. The negro's strength, exceptional at all times, was multiplied tenfold; he had run amuck. When he arose the machete was in his grasp and Don Pablo's brains were on ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... and sevenfold ring on ring about it weld. Meanwhile, in windy bellows' womb some in the breezes take And give them forth, some dip the brass all hissing in the lake, 450 And all the cavern is agroan with strokes on anvil laid. There turn and turn about betwixt, with plenteous might to aid, They rear their arms; with grip of tongs ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... which he lay, crushed and squeezed them in his iron jaws like a bunch of grapes, and swallowed them into his fiery maw; or else they were hung up by their tongues by attendant friends in Satan's fiery furnace, or dragged alternately through ice and flames, and finally beaten to pieces on the anvil of hell, or throttled and wrung with ropes and cloths.—As compared with the torments they would suffer there, every present anxiety was as the kiss of a lover. Mothers would hear the brain seething in their infants' ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... was not acted upon. But he went on inventing in other directions. He thenceforward devoted himself entirely to mechanical pursuits. Mr. Buckle has said of him:—"The rising sun often found him, after a night spent in incessant labour, still at the anvil or turning-lathe; for with his own hands he would make such articles as he would not intrust to unskilful ones." In 1799 he took out a patent (No. 2340), embodying some very important inventions. First, it included ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... iron, when it glimmered on the anvil, 'Wherefore glowest thou longer than the firebrand?'— 'I was born in the dark mine, and the brand in the pleasant greenwood.' Kindness ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... out. According to the tradition, it was safer for him to strike on his head than on his shins. Certainly he was not badly injured, and if reduced to extremity he might have let out his head for use as a blacksmith's anvil. ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic
... all this cruelty was acted under smooth pretences, for hewn stones are smooth. The tables were finely wrought with tools, even as the heart of the Jews were with hypocrisy. But alas, they were stone still; that is, hard and cruel; else they could not have been an anvil for Satan to forge such horrid barbarism upon. The tables were in number the same with the lavers, and were set by them to show what are the fruits of being devoted to the law, as the Jews were, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... I exclaimed. "And I shall never forget your 'Conundrum of the Anvil' which appeared in it. How often have I laughed at that most wonderful conceit, and how often have I ...
— The Magic Egg and Other Stories • Frank Stockton
... impoverished. The parliament of England granted, and the nation paid such incredible sums as enabled their sovereign not only to maintain invincible navies and formidable armies, but likewise to give subsidies to all the powers of Europe. He knew that a treaty of this kind was actually upon the anvil between his Britannic majesty and the czarina, and he began to be apprehensive of seeing an army of Russians in the Netherlands. His fears from this quarter were not without foundation. In the month of November, the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... set round the piston so as to act as a valve, and produce a regular blast. Both cylinders communicate with the same nozzle, one piston rising while the other falls. An oblong piece of iron on the ground was the anvil, and a small vice was fixed on the projecting root of a tree outside. These, with a few files and hammers, were literally the only tools with which an old man makes these fine guns, finishing then himself from the ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... scene for those who had the interest of the colony at heart. Every district of the Upper Province had contributed its portion of labour, talent, and ingenuity, to furnish forth the show. The products of the soil, the anvil, and the loom, met the eye at every turn. The genius of the mechanic was displayed in the effective articles of machinery, invented to assist the toils and shorten the labour of human hands, and were many and excellent in their kind. Improvements in old implements, and others entirely new, were ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... Henry. Still is the night. The sound of feet Has died away from the empty street, And like an artisan, bending down His head on his anvil, the dark town Sleeps, with a slumber deep and sweet. Sleepless and restless, I alone, In the dusk and damp of these wails of stone, Wander and weep in ...
— The Golden Legend • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... How shall we hold our organization and resources meanwhile, so that our movement will not lose its prestige and place among the political issues of our country? These are questions we must not leave to answer themselves. If we are 'not the hammer, our cause will be the anvil.' Women not connected with any particular movement are calling meetings in order to pass pointless resolutions of the promised service of women if required. The big question presents itself, shall ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... and an organ of immense proportions and power, built expressly for the occasion, was employed. The grand chorus and solo vocalists numbered 1,040. Besides, one hundred anvils (used in the rendering of Verdi's "Anvil Chorus") were played upon by a hundred of the city's firemen in full uniform; while to all this was added a group of cannon, the same being used in the performance of the "Star-spangled Banner." The vast chorus, the orchestra, and all the leading performers ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... landing-place but, without waiting to push her off, he leapt upon the rock, and making his way hastily to the spot which had privately given him alarm, he had the satisfaction to ascertain that he had only been deceived by the peculiar situation and aspect of the smith's anvil and block, which very completely represented the appearance of a lifeless body upon the rock. The writer carefully suppressed his feelings, the simple mention of which might have had a bad effect upon the artificers, and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Crushingly falls the axe on the tree, the Dryad sighs sadly; Down from the crest of the mount plunges the thundering load. Winged by the lever, the stone from the rocky crevice is loosened; Into the mountain's abyss boldly the miner descends. Mulciber's anvil resounds with the measured stroke of the hammer; Under the fist's nervous blow, spurt out the sparks of the steel. Brilliantly twines the golden flax round the swift-whirling spindles, Through the strings of the yarn ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... smith, He that smoothed with the hammer Him that smote on the anvil; Saying of the solder, It is good; And fixing the idol with nails, lest it ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... life, they would destroy the best friend they ever had. This villa, where most of his plans were matured and his state papers drawn up, was called by the people, in derision of his supposed ancestry, "The Smithy." Here, as they believed, was the anvil upon which the chains of their slavery were forging; here, mostly deserted by those who had been his earlier, associates, he assumed a philosophical demeanor which exasperated, without deceiving his adversaries. Over the great gate of his house he had placed the marble ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Morvan most furiously, as a great tempest assails a ship. The lances crossed, but that of the Moor broke like matchwood. Both leaped to earth, sword in hand, and rushed at each other like lions. Many lusty strokes were given and taken, and from their armour flew sparks like those from a smith's anvil. Then the Moor, grasping his sword with both hands, made ready to strike a mighty blow, when swift and trenchantly Morvan thrust his blade far into the arm-pit and the heart and the giant tumbled to the earth like a falling tree. Morvan placed his foot on the dead man's breast, withdrew ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... wondered at. A man who spends his life climbing into people's mouths and playing "The Anvil Chorus" on their molars with a monkey-wrench, who says, "Now this won't hurt you in the least," and then deals one a smart rap on a nerve with a pickaxe—such a man cannot expect to be popular. He must ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 14, 1920 • Various
... partially recovered from the blow and was getting ready for another rush, when Jack slipped in and to one side and hit like a blacksmith at the anvil. ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... thy art, My gentle Shakspeare, must enjoy a part. For though the poet's matter nature be, His heart doth give the fashion: and, that he Who casts to write a living line, must sweat, (Such as thine are) and strike the second heat Upon the Muse's anvil; turn the same, And himself with it, that he thinks to frame; Or for the laurel, he may gain a scorn; For a good poet's made, as well as born. And such wert thou! Look how the father's face Lives ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... the latter, for in the course of an p 154 hour a ray of light traverses over a space of 592 millions of miles. While according to the theogony of Hesiod, the dimensions of the universe were supposed to be expressed by the time occupied by bodies in falling to the ground ("the brazen anvil was not more than nine days and nine nights in falling from heaven to earth"), the elder Herschel was of opinion* that light required almost two millions of years to pass to the Earth from the remotest luminous vapor reached by ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... falling like a cataract into the waist, engulfing the men there in a well of green wave and foam; while, at the same moment, the squall ahead struck her on the port bow, the vessel, between the two opposing forces, being like a piece of iron 'twixt hammer and anvil. The concussion was tremendous, knocking everybody off their feet just as if the ship had struck on ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... day, the tyrant ordered that Adrian's limbs should be one by one struck off on a blacksmith's anvil, and lastly his head. And still it was his wife who held him and sustained him through all and, ere the last stroke of the executioner, had received his last breath. She took up one of the severed hands, kissed it, and placed it in her bosom, ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... be greater or less, caeteris paribus, according to the degrees of these dexterities which they admit. A smith's work at his anvil admits little but the first; fencing, shooting, and riding, admit something of the second; while the fine arts admit (merely through the channel of the bodily dexterities) an expression almost ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... to look on. Some singing, some crying, some praying, and others swearing. The people of color who were in there were slaves, there without crime, but for safe keeping, while the whites were some of the most abandoned characters living. The keeper took me up to the anvil block and fastened a chain about my leg, which I had to drag after me both day and night during three months. My labor was sawing stone; my food was coarse corn bread and beef shanks and cows heads with pot liquor, and a very ...
— Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave, Written by Himself • Henry Bibb
... King's authority, disperse his men, and propose the mediation of these Government friends for his pardon. Upon his submission the King was graciously pleased to send down orders that upon giving up his arms and coming into Inverness, he might expect his pardon; yet upon the Pretender's Anvil at Perth and my Lord Huntly's suggestions to him that now was the time for them to appear for their King and country, and that what honour they lost at Dunblane might yet be regained; but while he thus insinuated to my Lord Seaforth, he privately found ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... she had taken it to be mended; she had been to the smith's and now she could not get out of her mind what she had seen there: a black cave, like an oven, down three steps; a dark hole hung and filled on every side with black iron tools; and, amid all this jumble, an anvil and, in the red glow from the dancing light of the smithy fire, a small, stunted, black little fellow, hidden out of knowledge in that gloom; a bent, thin little man wound in a leathern apron and with a black face, from ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... the glorious view from the churchyard. The Palace of the Archbishops is now a convent: it was restored by Pugin after being in a state of ruin for many years. Certain portions may be seen at uncertain times. In the ancient dining-room are preserved the hammer, tongs and anvil of St. Dunstan. The Saint's well is in the garden. It was hereabouts that St. Dunstan had his great tussle with the Devil, holding the fiend by the nose with his tongs; eventually the Evil One wrenched himself free; making an eight mile ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes
... the wall. They were fine-looking men, nearly naked, and joined together by means of a ponderous piece of iron above two feet long, with a heavy ring at either end which encircled their necks. The rings were so thick that their ends must have been forced together with sledge-hammer and anvil after being put round the men's necks, and then overlapped and riveted. Thus it became impossible to free them from their fetters except by the slow and laborious process of cutting them through ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... eye glitter under the flabby brow, at the recital of any brave, true deed, as if it had been his own; as if, but for some mischance back yonder in his youth, it might have been given to even this poor old fellow to strike a great, ringing blow on Fate's anvil before he died,—to give his place in the life-boat to a more useful man,—to help buy with his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... a whole, this army was justly thought the equal of twice its own number of raw yeomanry, suddenly called to the field from the anvil, the workshop, or the plough. Its strongest arm was its artillery; its weakest, its ...
— Burgoyne's Invasion of 1777 - With an outline sketch of the American Invasion of Canada, 1775-76. • Samuel Adams Drake
... doing, and could not. She groped desperately, but overwhelming, insistent, there had developed in her a sudden, preventing tumult—in paradox, a confusion in rhythm—like the beating of a great hammer on an anvil, only incredibly more swift than blows from human hands. Over and over again she repeated to herself the one word: "wait," "wait," "wait," but mechanically now, without thought as to the reason. Then, all at once, soft, all-enfolding, kindly ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... in its nature a good thing. We individuals exist as such, I believe, for the purpose in things, and our separations and antagonisms serve that purpose. We play against each other like hammer and anvil. But the synthesis of a collective will in humanity, which is I believe our human and terrestrial share in that purpose, is an idea that carries with it a conception of a secular alteration in the scope and method of both love and hate. Both widen and change with ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... gradually becoming more and more silent, and soon afterwards the only sounds that broke upon their ears were the curious metallic notes of the urupongas, or bell-birds; which were so like to the rapid beating of a smith's hammer on an anvil, that it was with the greatest difficulty Barney was restrained from going off by himself in search of the "smiddy." Indeed he began to suspect that the worthy hermit was deceiving him, and was only fully convinced at last when he saw one of the birds. It was pure white, about ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... in another clime Of which our fathers knew not, he hath given Arts, arms, and skill we know not, or if ever knew, Have quite forgot. Your hands are thickened up With toils of field and shop, where whirring wheels resound, And hammers clink. The anvil and the plough Belong to you; the very ox construes your speech, And turns him to obey you. All this toil We deem a slavery too heavy to be borne, And which our tribes revolt at. Oft we stand To view ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... against the cabin of his boat, look about him to see what hell he had escaped into. The sun was shining somewhere, blinding his eyes, which were already seared. A river coiled by, every ripple a blistering white flame. He heard birds and other music which sounded like an anvil chorus performing in the narrow confines of a head as large ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... bellows a strong flame was produced. All our tools were composed of coral; two long pieces served as tongs, and another as a hammer. Having heated the iron, Dick knocked it out into a long thin bar, and then placing it on the mass of coral which served as an anvil, cut it with successive sharp blows of his knife into small pieces. Each of these had to be re-heated, and taken up and dropped into a small hole with a blow from the hammer, when the head was produced ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston |
