"Blunt" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... something that her charming listless hands could really do; she had no doubt of their capacity for knotting a ribbon or placing a flower to advantage. And of course only these finishing touches would be expected of her: subordinate fingers, blunt, grey, needle-pricked fingers, would prepare the shapes and stitch the linings, while she presided over the charming little front shop—a shop all white panels, mirrors, and moss-green hangings—where her finished creations, hats, wreaths, aigrettes and the rest, perched on ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... much play with some mysterious papers found a good time after the first discovery half-burned in the fireplace of the Prince's bedroom; there was a lot put forward to support the idea of suicide; but the blunt truth of the affair is that the Prince de Conde was murdered, and that the murder was hushed up as much as possible. Not, however, with complete success. There were few in France who gave any countenance to ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... mantel-piece the roll which he had in his hand. It was a species of blotting-book made of very thin blue paper, and which seemed to be slightly oiled. Between each leaf of blue paper there was a sheet of white paper. He took out of his pocket a sort of blunt bodkin, saying, "The first thing to hand will serve your purpose, a nail or a match," and he traced with his bodkin on the first leaf of the book the word "Republic." Then turning over the leaves, he said, ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... presence. Fanny was really nervous; all the events of the day had conspired to make her so. She, who, as a rule, knew nothing whatever about nerves, was oppressed by them now. There had been the meeting of the Specialities; there had been the blunt refusal to make Sibyl one of their number. Then there was the appalling fact that she (Fanny) was turned out of her bedroom. There was also the unpleasantness of Sibyl's insurrection; and last, but not least, a spider had been put into her ...
— Betty Vivian - A Story of Haddo Court School • L. T. Meade
... friends. He attaches himself much to men younger than himself; and somehow or other I have observed that most of them have come to grief. Besides, a person in whose sagacity I have great confidence warned me against making the Chevalier's acquaintance, and said to me, in his blunt way, 'De Finisterre came to Paris with nothing; he has succeeded to nothing; he belongs to no ostensible profession by which anything can be made. But evidently now he has picked up a good deal; and in proportion as any young associate of his becomes poorer, De Finisterre seems mysteriously ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... off, and playfully planted the forefinger of his right hand on the side of his upturned nose, saying "Walker!" Then he relented, and, reapproaching his companion, said: "Honour bright, now, you're no workin' geologist, lookin' out for the blunt? You're a collector of Favosites Wilkinsoma, Stenopora fibrosa, Asaphus Canadensis, Ambonychia radiata, Heliopora fragilis, and all that rot, ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... the forty-four who went back to work for him: Every one of you is a traitor to American citizenship. Let us use blunt words and call a spade a spade. Theodore Marrin, you have betrayed your employees. You forty-four men, you have ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... which gathered the capillary harvest of the past twenty-four hours with a thoroughness, a rapidity, a security, and a facility which were a surprise, almost a revelation. The idea of a guarded cutting edge is an old one; I remember the "Plantagenet" razor, so called, with the comb-like row of blunt teeth, leaving just enough of the edge free to do its work. But this little affair had a blade only an inch and a half long by three quarters of an inch wide. It had a long slender handle, which took apart for packing, and was put together with the greatest ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... enough to have a drink," said Dunwoodie, blushing without apparent cause and shaking Harboro awkwardly by the hand. And then, as if this blunt invitation might prove too transparent, he added: "I was in a game last night, and I'm ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... offensive both to his personal preferences and his inherited standards of taste. The girl in her scarlet dress, with her dark bobbed hair curling in on her neck, her candid ivory forehead, her provoking blunt nose, her bright red lips, and the inquiring arch of her black eyebrows over her gray-green eyes, had appeared to him absurdly like a picture on the cover of some cheap magazine. He had heartily disapproved of her, but he couldn't help looking at her. If she had been on the cover of a magazine, ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... words of supplication and petition, but if by prayer you mean also a mental attitude of devotion, and a kind of sub-conscious reference to God in all that you do, such unceasing prayer is possible. Do not let us blunt the edge of this commandment, and weaken our own consciousness of having failed to obey it, by getting entangled in the cobwebs of mere curious discussions as to whether the absolute ideal of perfectly unbroken communion ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... Blunt did not move from the gate, but threw forward his rifle with a careless motion, but an expressive glance, that caused the Indians to resume their seats and pipes with an emphatic "Wah!" of disgust at having been startled out of their propriety by a trifle; while Dick Varley snatched ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... sight of any land, but in the euening we spied an entrance into the land, by a riuer among the said Hilles of Granges, and a Cape lying toward the Southwest about 3 leagues from vs. The said Cape is on the top of it blunt-pointed, and also toward the Sea it endeth in a point, wherefore wee named it The pointed Cape, on the North side of which there is a plaine Iland. And because we would haue notice of the said entrance, to see if there were any good hauens, we strooke saile for that night. ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt
... needs could get truly primitive. Oxygen, water, food, repair parts for vital equipment. Cannibalism and blood-drinking could also be part of blunt necessity. ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... half-way home now, near the roadside Cross. And they stopped a moment in front of it. The Rector's ruddy face had turned pale as death, and he kept biting nervously at his fingers, those blunt, bony, calloused ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... another common variety of a finer texture, the aggregating process had gone further, for the whole mass consisted of quite short, parallel, often slightly curved layers or patches, of whitish or reddish finely granulo-crystalline feldspathic matter, generally terminating at both ends in blunt points; these layers or patches further tended to pass into wedge or almond-shaped little masses, and these finally into true crystals of feldspar, with their centres often slightly drusy. The series was so perfect that I could not doubt that these large crystals, ...
— South American Geology - also: - Title: Geological Observations On South America • Charles Darwin
... slip on to the human epic bound up with it—tale after tale of life in the ranching country, and of the emigration now pouring into Alberta—witched out of him by this delicately eager face, these lovely listening eyes. And here, in spite of his blunt, simple speech, came out the deeper notes of feeling, feeling richly steeped in those "mortal things"—earthy, tender, humorous, or terrible—which make ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... play. Nor is the sense of touch so clean and poignant in children as it is in a man. If you will turn over your old memories, I think the sensations of this sort you remember will be somewhat vague, and come to not much more than a blunt, general sense of heat on summer days, or a blunt, general sense of wellbeing in bed. And here, of course, you will understand pleasurable sensations; for overmastering pain - the most deadly and tragical element ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... reservoir pen shaped like a pencil, in which the flow of ink is regulated by pressure of a style or fine needle with blunt point upon the paper. It must be held in a vertical position. All marks made with one, both up and down strokes, ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... to give you the sermon, Or say if the tongue were French, Latin, or German; Whatever he preached in, I give you my word The meaning was easy to all that heard; Famous preachers there have been and be, But never was one so convincing as he; So blunt was never a begging friar, No Jesuit's tongue so barbed with fire, Cameronian never, nor Methodist, Wrung gall out of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... extreme parsimony, was obliged to consent, but as the point of the pencil was very blunt, desired the boy to get her a knife that she might cut it. He obeyed, but said "Pray Miss, take care it ben't known, for master don't do such a thing once in a year, and if he know'd I'd got you the knife, he'd go nigh to give me a good polt of ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... course. The Croonah turned her blunt prow half a point out into the Atlantic, and she raced on; she passed by Burling Island, leaving the slowly winking eye on her starboard quarter. Ahead lay the complete darkness of the ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... about to answer angrily when the subject of their speech appeared. Both sprang to their feet expectantly. But the Emir, with a blunt "Good-morning," passed them by and mounted the horse which stood in waiting before the door. They watched him ride away, then turned and gazed into each other's eyes. Both agreed that there was nothing ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... said Joshua; "never mind Fanny Brighton—she is only one of the blunt sort, saying right to your face what other folks would say ...
— Be Courteous • Mrs. M. H. Maxwell
... deeply immersed in thoughts excited by the hints which had been thus wantonly thrown out to inflame his imagination, when all at once, on lifting his eyes, he saw Clement Lindsay coming straight towards him. Gifted was unarmed, except with a pair of blunt scissors, which he carried habitually in his pocket. What should he do? Should he fly? But he was never a good runner, being apt to find himself scant o' breath, like Hamlet, after violent exercise. His demeanor ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... whilst both men were drinking, and quietly possessed herself of a knife; and, but that it was too blunt to do the service to which she put it, Charlot's intervention would have come too late. As it was he caught her wrist in time, and in a rage he tore the weapon from her fingers, and flung ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... dashed between the fighting men, seizing with his left hand the rifle of the leader—who had knelt down and was on the point of firing—and with his right hand got hold of the blade—fortunately blunt—of another Afghan's sword, who was slashing away at the Sistanis near him. The force of the blow caused quite a wound in the gallant Major's hand, but suddenly, as by magic owing to the respect he commanded on both sides, his action put a ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... to France, he soon feasts upon frogs as freely and speaks with as accurate an accent as the Parisian, but he cannot quite assume the gay insouciance of the French; if to England, he adores method, learns to grumble and imbibe old ale, yet does not become accustomed to the free, blunt raillery,—the "chaff,"—with which Britons disport themselves; if to China, he lives upon curries and inscribes his name with a camel's-hair pencil, but all Oriental bizarrerie fails to thoroughly amuse him. Wherever he may go, he settles at once and easily into the outward life of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... had been met by the wind, Burton anticipated that his own, with its blunt faithfulness to the original and its erotic notes, would be met by whirlwind. Considering the temper of the public [386] at the time he thought it not improbable that an action would be brought against ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... could bear. The tale reveals the spiritual and moral development of Jim Hartigan. The author assures us that most of the characters are drawn from life, and that some of the main events are historical. All which I can easily believe, for Mr. SETON'S blunt method of describing Jim Hartigan's evolution from an unhallowed stable-boy to a muscular Christian continually suggests reality. It is not a stylish method, but it gets home, and in a tale of this kind that is the main, if not the only, matter ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov 21, 1917 • Various
... Forster, Landor's faithful friend and admirer, one can only say that in his writing about Landor, as upon other topics, we are distracted between the respect due to his strong feeling for the excellent in literature, and the undeniable facts that his criticisms have a very blunt edge, and that his eulogies ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... kingdom, from Premier to peasant, was laughing in his sleeve at the helplessness of the Supreme Council. But they laughed too soon. For the Supreme Council wired to the Food Administrator, Herbert Hoover, who was in Vienna, informing him of the facts of the situation, whereupon Mr. Hoover, who has a blunt and uncomfortably direct way of achieving his ends, sent a curt message to the Rumanian government informing it that, if the orders of the Supreme Council were not immediately obeyed, he would shut off its supplies ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell
... good and loyal subjects, who, as they were accustomed to mind their oaths, considered well before they took them; and that they must certainly stand excused if they moved with caution in an affair, which they found so difficult to justify by precedent in their history." [32] This blunt expostulation of the honest courtier, equally creditable to the sovereign who could endure, and the subject who could make it, was received in the frank spirit in which it was given, and probably opened Isabella's eyes to her own precipitancy, as we find no further ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... melancholy disposition, had something blunt in his manner, and sometimes he appeared rude; but in fact he was no disagreeable companion, and made a good father and husband. He was tender, and his soul was very susceptible of friendship. His constitution was very favourable to love, but ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... stood near the left bank bridgehead, was utterly destroyed, the glorious Church of "St. Mary under the Chain," and with it the home of the Knights of Malta, suffered the same fate. Of St. Mary's Church there remain the chancel and two stout towers; I can see them from my embowered terrace, the blunt red roofs rising above a glorious riot of fruit blossom. The pageant moves on, giving a flash here and there of some one who stood up above his fellows like George Podiebrad, or the strong men who ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... "father" and "mother," or use the more babyish form of "papa" and "mama" is a matter of parental choice, but the preference in some circles is for the former. A blunt "yes" or "no" is not thought polite from a child; he should say "yes, father," "no, mama," "yes, Mrs. Smith." "Ma'am" as a form of ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... no objection to have Gifted Hopkins about Myrtle as much as she would endure to have him. The youthful bard entertained her very innocently with his bursts of poetry, but she was in no danger from a young person so intimately associated with the yard-stick, the blunt scissors, and the brown-paper parcel. There was Cyprian too, about whom he did not feel any very particular solicitude. Myrtle had evidently found out that she was handsome and stylish and all ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... I. 435, has, "and as word of a palm-tree board which is very hard and very heavy, not sharp but blunt, about two fingers thick everywhere, with which as it is hard and heavy like iron, although a man has a helmet on his head they will crush his skull to ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... of a very keen razor by the microscope, it appears as broad as the back of a pretty thick knife, rough, uneven, and full of notches and furrows, and so far from anything like sharpness, that an instrument, as blunt as this seemed to be, would not serve even to cleave wood. An exceedingly small needle being also examined, it resembled a rough iron bar out of a smith's forge. The sting of a bee viewed through the same instrument, showed everywhere a polish amazingly beautiful, without the ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... of his hospitality. His brother was returned from a visit to Guaymas and Mazatlan, and he had brought wine of the finest and cigars such as Arizona never had known, and Sancho was manifestly disconcerted at the regrets or refusals, coldly courteous on the part of Loring, blunt and brusque on the part of Blake. The veterans, however, saw no harm in going and were sumptuously entertained by mine host in the best room of the ranch. Blake caused a strong guard to be posted at camp, a most unusual thing, and one instantly noted among ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... gentlemen who, with Major Ogden, were to compose a joint commission to select the sites for the permanent forts and navyyard of California. This commission was composed of Majors Ogden, Smith, and Leadbetter, of, the army, and Captains Goldsborough, Van Brunt, and Blunt, of the navy. These officers, after a most careful study of the whole subject, selected Mare Island for the navy-yard, and "Benicia" for the storehouses and arsenals of the army. The Pacific Mail ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... that this mystery concealed some great design; he therefore hastened to solicit an audience as desired. When introduced into the cabinet of the king, his majesty inquired at once, "Monsieur l' abbe, can I depend upon your discretion?" "Sire," replied the abbe, with a blunt frankness, "I am sorry your majesty can doubt it." "Be satisfied, sir," replied the king, "I had no intention to offend you; but I wish to consult you upon a point, the importance of which you will fully appreciate; ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... this entanglement, Slidell lost his head, for hope deferred when apparently within reach of its end is a dangerous councilor of state. In his extreme anxiety, Slidell sent to the Emperor a note the blunt rashness of which the writer could not have appreciated. Saying that he feared the Emperor's subordinates might play into the hands of Washington, he threw his fat in the fire by speaking of the ships as "now ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... way Jerry was aware of her inquietude, and when they rose at length to leave their secluded corner, he turned and spoke with a certain blunt chivalry that ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... not a feeling that they were free, but that something awful at the same time had happened which filled him with uneasiness and weighed upon his bosom like a heavy stone. Finally his thoughts began to grow blunt. For a long time he gazed at the big moths hovering above the flame and in the end he nodded and dozed. Kali also dozed, but awoke every little while and threw twigs into ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... top of her head, as if the child who owned the doll had driven a tack through it anywhere, so that it only got fastened on. Another remarkable thing in this little old woman was, that the same child seemed to have damaged her face in two or three places with some blunt instrument in the nature of a spoon; her countenance, and particularly the tip of her nose, presenting the phenomena of several dints, generally answering to the bowl of that article. A further remarkable thing in this little old ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... inquired solicitously concerning the captain's health. There was never a hint of hostility, never a trace of resentment or envy. And always, too, Sears emerged from one of those encounters with a feeling that he had had a little the worst of it, that his seafaring manners and blunt habit of speech made him appear at a marked disadvantage in comparison with this easy, suave, gracefully elegant personage. And so many of those meetings took place in ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... little analysis. Sometimes a government will propose, in the interests of peace and good government, to crush the enemy's aggressiveness by a purely defensive aggression, an excuse for bloodshed which only the most fanatical pacifist could confuse with Mr. Asquith's blunt watchword of "crushing German militarism." The logical fallacy of such an excuse which is almost invariably pleaded by powerful belligerents,[84] a fallacy of which no one could wish to accuse Mr. Asquith's solid intellect, lies (quite apart from any question ...
— The World in Chains - Some Aspects of War and Trade • John Mavrogordato
... itself felt as far south as Earith Bridge, where the Ouse comes leisurely down with its clear pools and reed-beds. At the extremity of the southernmost of all the fingers of the Isle, a big hamlet clusters round a great ancient church, whose blunt tower is visible for miles above its grove of sycamores. More than twelve centuries ago an old saint, whose name I think was Owen, though it was Latinised by the monks into Ovinus, because he had the care of the sheep, kept the flocks of St. Etheldreda, queen and ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the last few miles the ancient capital of Wessex and of England is seen ahead lying in the lap of its enfolding hills. The blunt and stern outline of the grey cathedral is softened by the misty veil, shot with mingled gold and pearl, that rests softly over the valley and that obliterates everything mean and unworthy in the scene before us. Just as the memories ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... dread of Miss Clarendon as Lady Cecilia seemed to feel. Lady Cecilia was indeed in the greatest terror lest Miss Clarendon should have heard some of these reports about Helen and Beauclerc, and would in her blunt way ask directly what they meant, and go on with some of her point-blank questions, which Cecilia feared might be found unanswerable. However, as Miss Clarendon had only just come to town from Wales, and come only about her teeth, she hoped that no reports could ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... Something in his blunt straightforward way appealed to me and I determined to try him. Handled right I imagined he would be a good man; handled wrong, he would probably become a bright and shining light of the genus hobo. So I hired ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... calmer moment, Malipieri might have doubted the logic of the last statement; but at the present moment he was not very calm, and he turned a pencil nervously in his fingers, standing it alternately on its point and its blunt end, upon the blotting-paper beside him, and looking ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... shaken off.) There is the casualty return, and a report on the doings of the enemy, and another report of one's own doings, and a report on the direction of the wind, and so on. Then there are various indents to fill up—scrawled on a wobbly writing-block with a blunt indelible pencil by the light of a guttering candle—for ammunition, and sandbags, ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... lightheartedness, indispensable to happiness. The man of mere reason without passion is a stone image, blunt and without any human feeling, a spectre or monster, from whom all fly, deaf to all natural emotions, susceptible neither to love nor compassion. Nothing escapes him, in nothing he errs; he sees through everything, he weighs everything accurately, ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... feeling downright sorry for the poor fellow till I got to wondering how many people are feeling sorry for me for the same reason. That reflection changed the situation greatly, and I began to feel some resentment against the blunt statement in the book as being rather too personal. Just as I begin to think that we have standardized a lot of things, along comes some one in a book, or elsewhere, and completely upsets my fine and comforting theories and projects me into chaos again. No sooner do I get a lot ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... Your statement is blunt. But, as I have been renominated for a second term, my administration has been endorsed by our party, and the election is only eight weeks off—there is but one conclusion possible—and that is, that you should roll up your sleeves ...
— A Man of the People - A Drama of Abraham Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... I did not mean it, my boy. You are doing your duty admirably to your invalid relative. I hope we both are; and sick people's fancies are to be studied. I don't think though you need be quite so blunt, Master Blount, though," ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... of rivers of oil? Shall I give my first-born for my transgression, the fruit of my body as atonement for my soul?—It hath been told thee, O man, what is good, and what Jehovah requireth of thee. Nay, it is to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly before thy God." Although the blunt statement of the contrast between cultus and religion is peculiarly prophetic, Micah can still take his stand upon this, "It hath been told thee, O man, what Jehovah requires." It is no new matter, but ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... said, "because I don't choose to say anything more till I have thought about it. I think you are wrong in your conclusions about the Church, though surely you are right in thinking we ought to have patience with each other. And now tell me true, Mr Walton,—I'm a blunt kind of man, descended from an old Puritan, one of Cromwell's Ironsides, I believe, and I haven't been to a university like you, but I'm no fool either, I hope,—don't be offended at my question: wouldn't you be glad to see me out of your ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... in the act of dressing when a knock sounded at the outer door; Hinge marched off to answer it, returning with a large visiting-card edged with a line of mourning. He presented this to me, and I read the words "Count Ruffiano," printed very badly in blunt ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... passed of mingled shadow and sunshine within those dear walls. It was hard to part with her mother, who seemed to cling more fondly than ever to her noble-minded daughter; her father and Stephen, each in their blunt, honest way, expressed their sorrow that the time of her departure was so near at hand; but still Mary did not waver in her determination, though a word from her mother would have changed the whole color of ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... very strong," pursued Mary, who had a blunt downright sort of manner; "I wonder if India will agree with you; I wonder if you will ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade
... the grotesque—would it not have been agreeable to hear something more than two lines from the lips of a lover so stout-hearted, yet so ardent, in his own rough, blunt way, as he who has thus ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... was only the opinion of a blunt old farmer; Launce Blake knows her a great deal better, or thinks he does. In his own way he is almost as handsome as she is; a tall fair man, with eyes so dark a gray that they look black under their thick lashes and a smile ...
— Only an Irish Girl • Mrs. Hungerford
... silence followed, which checked even Piney's giggle. Mr. Windibrook evidently had no "heartiness" for non-subscribing humor. "There are those who can jest with sacred subjects," he said ponderously, "but I have always found Mr. Trixit, though blunt, eminently practical. Your father is still away," he added, shifting the conversation to Cissy, "hovering wherever he can extract the honey to store up for the provision of ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... began walking about the room, and talking with considerable vehemence, but no more in anger. He would tell her what cause there was for this silly gossip. He would tell her who this girl was who had been lightly mentioned. And in his blunt, frank, matter-of-fact way, which did not quite conceal his emotion, he revealed to his cousin all that he thought of Wenna Rosewarne, and what he hoped for her in the future, and what their present relations were, and then plainly asked her if ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... without lacerating or contusing the parts, "and," says the distinguished lithotomist Klein, "upon this basis rests the success of my operations; and hence I invariably make it a rule to let the incision be rather too large than too small, and never to dilate it with any blunt instrument when it happens to be too diminutive, but to enlarge it with a knife, introduced, if necessary, several times."—Practische Ansichten der Bedeutendsten Chirurgische Operationen. Opinions of the highest authority being thus opposed, in reference to the question whether free or limited ...
— Surgical Anatomy • Joseph Maclise
... torn away by a blow, probably given with a spade or some blunt instrument. His hand, all muddy and bloodstained, still ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... business is in haste, Signior Baptista, I cannot come every day to woo. You knew my father: he is dead, and has left me heir to all his lands and goods. Then tell me, if I get your daughter's love, what dowry you will give with her." Baptista thought his manner was somewhat blunt for a lover; but being glad to get Katharine married, he answered that he would give her twenty thousand crowns for her dowry, and half his estate at his death: so this odd match was quickly agreed on, and ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... carelessly used, and left about anyhow instead of being hung up. How much loss there is in a year in the careless use of knives and plate! Whenever possible both of these get into the hands of the cook. Her own tools from neglect or misuse have become blunt or worse, and she takes the best blade and the plated or silver spoon whenever she ...
— Nelson's Home Comforts - Thirteenth Edition • Mary Hooper
... Sir Walter Blunt: there's honour for you! here's no vanity! I am as hot as molten lead, and as heavy too. God keep lead out ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... the regular length of wire is drawn, the knife descends and cuts it off. Next, each small piece of wire, for we can hardly call it anything else yet, is headed by a sharp rap from a small automatic hammer. Lastly, the blunt ends are pointed by passing over a series of rapidly revolving emery-wheels, and the pin falls, the essentially completed article, into a large box, at the rate of three ...
— The Great Round World And What Is Going On In It, April 22, 1897, Vol. 1, No. 24 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... given up the fight, for she had bid on no work of any kind since the morning she had called upon Schwartz and told him, in her blunt, frank way, "Give the work to McGaw at me price. ...
— Tom Grogan • F. Hopkinson Smith
... of thirty-four, five feet ten in height, flat, thin, but strongly built, with a large waist and limbs which, though vigorous, were rather unwieldy. Her face was plain: rather square and harsh in outline, with blunt, almost coarse features, but a good complexion, clear and healthy, and large, interesting, and slightly prominent brown eyes, full of kindness, sympathy, and brightness, full, too, of eager intelligence and of energy, eyes of a woman who was intensely alive both in body and in mind. The ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... Carney has not asked to [have] General Blunt removed, or interfered with, in his military operations. He has asked that he, the Governor, be allowed to commission officers for troops raised in Kansas, as other governors of loyal States do; and I think he ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... All Englishmen at that time, with the exception of Carlyle, Froude, and the nobility, were very strongly anti-slavery, —the more so, as it cost them nothing to have other men's slaves liberated,—and the English are particularly blunt, not to say gauche, in introducing topics of conversation which are liable to become a matter of controversy. At the first dinner-party I attended in London some thirty-odd years ago, I had scarcely tasted ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... by the window opening on to the green lawn we talked of many a famous man Sir Robert had known. He spoke of the blunt ways of Garibaldi—rough, uncouth, though not lacking in the heartiness, however, inseparable from a sailor. Then of Lord Shaftesbury, Carlyle, ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... of which I gave courteous and, I hope, truthful answers. "Well, there's a great deal of it, you know," he remarked. I bowed. I knew, having written it. "Well, call in a week's time." I retired, silently blessing the British Army Officer for his blunt courtesy, his admirable ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... unfolded itself as a unique example of pure deduction, aided by utter lack of discrimination in the value of evidence. It was all synthesis, and no analysis. A certain hypothesis had to be established, and it was established. The style was directly antithetical to that curt, blunt, and simple pronouncement aimed at by innocents who deceive no one by denouncing Socialism, Trades-Unionism, &c., over the signature of "A Working Man." But the Essay. I am debarred from transcribing it, not only because of ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... measured and judged them what they are, by virtue of a vigorous soul leap out of their reach; they disdain and trample them underfoot, having a solid and well-fortified soul, against which the darts of fortune, coming to strike, must of necessity rebound and blunt themselves, meeting with a body upon which they can fix no impression; the ordinary and middle condition of men are lodged betwixt these two extremities, consisting of such as perceive evils, feel them, and are not ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... has an odd, blunt way, that is mistaken by strangers for ill nature.—'Tis so odd, that there's no describing it but by facts. I'll tell you one that first comes into my head. One evening Gay and I went to see him: you know how intimately we were all acquainted. On our coming in, ...
— Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, and Swift • Samuel Johnson
... no sanctity of family, no binding tie of marriage, none of the fine felicities and the endearing affections of home. Few of these things were the lot of the Southern black woman. Instead, thereof, a gross barbarism, which tended to blunt the tender sensibilities, to obliterate feminine delicacy and womanly shame, came down as her heritage from generation to generation; and it seems a miracle of providence and grace that, notwithstanding these terrible circumstances, so much ...
— The American Missionary, Vol. XLII. April, 1888. No. 4. • Various
... looking vaguely through the window at the fire, which just then so much engaged her mind that she did not resent her grandfather's blunt opinion. She could see Charley's form on the bank, shovelling and stirring the fire; and there flashed upon her imagination some other form which that fire might ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... child! Behold! is she not to break forth? For she crieth for aid. Unless she be heard the infant will slip! The fruit will not be! The plants will not break! The milk will be sour! The beer will be green! Women will not bear! Our spears will be blunt! Our magic will wane! ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... has been long known in France, and recently been used at the English mint for copying dies. A blunt point is carried by a very slow spiral movement successively over every part of the die to be copied, and is pressed by a weight into all the cavities; while a cutting point connected with it by the ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage
... was answered that there were no such men in the house. Kline, followed by Mr. Gorsuch, attempted to go up stairs. They were prevented from ascending by what appears to have been an ordinary fish gig. Some of the witnesses described it as "like a pitchfork with blunt prongs," and others were at a loss what to call this, the first weapon used in the contest. An axe was next thrown down, but ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... Monday morning the entire camp was alarmed by irregular and heavy firing along the river; but it proved to be my riflemen clearing their pieces; which did mortify General Clinton, and was the subject of a blunt order from headquarters, and a blunter rebuke from Major Parr to Boyd, who, I am inclined to think, did do this out of sheer deviltry. For that schoolboy delight of mischief which never, while he lived, was entirely quenched, was ever sparkling in ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... as if putting behind his back some tempter of the soul. Friends had said to him: "John, you are killing yourself!" or "John, you are working too hard and too steadily! Some day you will pay for all this." And one day a blunt-spoken rustic neighbor, observing him at his toil early and late, had said: "John Crawford, you are a fool! You do too much work! You have a fine constitution, and think that you can take liberties with it; but some day it will pay you, mark my words! ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... console him, and found, upon a further confession, that he had flown to spirits "now and then," to blunt the ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... like Rubislaw granite; his hair short, hard, and close, like a lion's; his body thick set like a little bull—a sort of compressed Hercules of a dog. He must have been ninety pounds' weight, at the least; he had a large blunt head; his muzzle black as night, his mouth blacker than any night, a tooth or two—being all he had—gleaming out of his jaws of darkness. His head was scarred with the records of old wounds, a sort ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... like a giant above all human affairs for the next two decades, and the speech of Mars is blunt and plain. He will say to us all: "Get your houses in order. If you squabble among yourselves, waste time, litigate, muddle, snatch profits and shirk obligations, I will certainly come down upon you again. I have taken all your men between eighteen and fifty, and killed and maimed ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... wounds—those produced by the claws of an animal, the bite of a dog, running quickly against some projecting blunt object, ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... Harley Street girlhood. Bertie was the eldest of six, and his father had been a coal porter who broke his back tumbling down a cellar when a little "on." Bertie—he now figured as Mr. Albert Adams in the cricket lists—was a well-grown youth, rather blunt-featured, but with honest hazel eyes, fresh-coloured, shock-haired. Vivie had once derided him for trying to woo his frontal hair into a flattened curl with much pomade ... he now only sleeked his curly hair with water. ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... worth double the price of the other. Both are of divers forms; some round, others oblong like the stones of dates, some like pigeons eggs; and others like the kidneys of a kid, and others again like chesnuts; but most are blunt at both ends, and not sharp. There is no less variety in the colours; some being light-red, others like the colour of honey, many of a dark ash-colour, but most of a waterish green. The East India or oriental bezoar consists of many coats, artificially compacted together ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... to forty, and they encamped on Major Ridley's plantation. An alarm took place during the darkness,—whether real or imaginary, does not appear,—and the men became scattered again. Proceeding to make fresh enlistments with the daylight, they were resisted at Dr. Blunt's house, where his slaves, under his orders, fired upon them; and this, with a later attack from a party of white men near Capt. Harris's, so broke up the whole force that they never re-united. The few who remained together agreed to separate for a few hours to see if any ...
— Black Rebellion - Five Slave Revolts • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... detaching it from the towns in which, until then, I had always imagined it, I could see how, in a particular instance, upon a reef of savage rocks, it had taken root and grown until it flowered in a tapering spire. I was taken to see reproductions of the most famous of the statues at Balbec,—shaggy, blunt-faced Apostles, the Virgin from the porch,—and I could scarcely breathe for joy at the thought that I might myself, one day, see them take a solid form against their eternal background of salt fog. ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... from his wife's hand and excitedly read it over to himself, going over each word with his blunt forefinger. He turned it over and examined the seal, he looked at the stamp and inside of the envelope, and failing to find any clue to the mystery he ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... Sir, your mercy! I meant not to offend you—plain of speech, And blunt in apprehension, I do judge Men's station from their seeming—but themselves From acts alone. You bid me share your shelter, And I am bound to you; and had you been The lowliest vassal had not thanked you less, Than I do now, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... received, as we passed, with much staring; here and there a lifting of hats, and some blunt nodding that incensed me, but he, feeling me bristle, squeezed my hand and talked of the scene, and ever and anon gathered a line of heads and shed an indulgent bow along them-; so on to the Casino. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... lights were showing along the hull, there was no effort at concealment. The moon was up now to illumine the scene, and it showed plainly the gleaming cylinder with its long body and blunt, shining ends, dropping, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... the first step. It is by degrees that men become intemperate. No man ever became so all at once—it is an impossibility in the nature of things. It requires time to harden the heart, to do away shame, to blunt the moral principle, to deaden the intellectual faculties, and temper the body. The intemperance of the day is the natural and legitimate consequence of the customs of society—of genteel and respectable society. It is the common ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... left Lalpura and marched to Kulgam, a short distance of some eight or ten miles. Mr. Blunt, the forest officer,[1] had most kindly placed the forest bungalows of the Lolab at our disposal; but, as they all lie on the other side of the valley, we are obliged to camp every night. We have been working ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... the western horizon the professor was still sound asleep; and Ben Zoof, who was especially anxious that the repose which promised to be so beneficial should not be disturbed, felt considerable annoyance at hearing a loud knocking, evidently of some blunt heavy instrument against a door that had been placed at the entrance of the gallery, more for the purpose of retaining internal warmth than for guarding against ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... Jim had seemed to be unfavorably influenced by these new conditions. Still, he had never amounted to much. Her resentment, or some feeling she had, was reaching a climax. She got up from her seat. She would not wait any longer for him, and when she did see him it would be to tell him a few blunt facts. ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... catastrophe. They push nearer and nearer to the brink of the abyss. The warning cry of "back" is challenged by the eager shout of "forward!" The older methods of social progress are abandoned as too slow. The older weapons of social defense are thrown aside as too blunt. Parliamentary discussion is powerless. It limps in the wake of the popular movement. The "state", as we knew it, threatens to dissolve into labor unions, conventions, boards of conciliation, and conferences. Society shaken to its base, hurls itself into the industrial ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock
... "Oh, it was done to prevent the vulgar trippers who chip stones and carve names and spoil the look of Stonehenge." It does not seem to occur to them that barbed wire and a policeman rather spoil the look of Stonehenge. The scratching of a name, particularly when performed with blunt penknife or pencil by a person of imperfect School Board education, can be trusted in a little while to be indistinguishable from the grayest hieroglyphic by the grandest Druid of old. But nobody could get a modern ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... Lincoln, begging him to receive them. Lincoln caused Greeley to go to Niagara and see the supposed ambassadors himself. He gave him written authority to bring to him any person with proper credentials, provided, as he made plain in terms that perhaps were blunt, that the basis of any negotiation should include the recognition of the Union and the abolition of slavery. The persons whom Greeley saw had no authority to treat about anything. Greeley in his irritation ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... were different now. She had learned more; she had discovered that her powers of vision might be limited to the very fine mental qualities of which her family were so proud; she had found out that the sharpest brains for practical purposes may be extremely blunt for higher ones. Freddy and she could play with figures; problems which could be worked out by practical methods were to them difficulties to be mastered by hard work, and hard work was pleasure to the Lamptons; it was their form of enjoyment. ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... use that stick as though it were a club, swinging it like a baseball bat. That would be as silly as using an overhand stab with a dagger. He used it the way a fencer would use a foil, and the hard, blunt end of it sank into the first thug's solar plexus with all the drive of the Duke's right arm and shoulder behind it. The thug gave a hoarse scream as all the air was driven from his lungs, and he dropped ...
— Nor Iron Bars a Cage.... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... Edward laughed at this blunt observation of Pablo's, and replied, "It is very true, Pablo, that I can not watch over my sisters, and protect them in person, when I am away; but there are reasons why I should go, nevertheless, and I may be more useful to them by going than by remaining with them. If I did not think so, I ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... men consists more in the configuration of the bodies; and it is of no little consequence in what bodies the soul is lodged; for there are many things which depend on the body that give an edge to the soul, many which blunt it. Aristotle indeed, says, that all men of great genius are melancholy; so that I should not have been displeased to have been somewhat duller than I am. He instances many, and, as if it were matter of fact, ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... of custom and fashion on manners, dress, and in Fine Art generally. The second chapter makes the application to our moral sentiments. Although custom will never reconcile us to the conduct of a Nero or a Claudius, it will heighten or blunt the delicacy of our sentiments on right and wrong. The fashion of the times of Charles II. made dissoluteness reputable, and discountenanced regularity of conduct. There is a customary behaviour that we expect in the old and in the young, in the ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... been killed by our hunters give me a Stronger evidence of the various Coloured bear of this country being one Species only, than any I have heretofore had. the poil of these bear were infinately longer finer & thicker than the black bear their tallons also longer & more blunt as worn by digging roots. the white redish brown and bey Coloured bear I saw together on the Missouri; the bey & Grizly have been Seen and killed together here. for these were the Colours of those which Collins killed on the 14th inst. ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... George. Mere innocence of guile, of verbal trickery, had not alone sufficed for his passionate bluntness in the present crisis. At a later stage in his career as a husband he might have been equally blunt; yet never again, perhaps, would he have been so emotional in his opposition to woman polluting herself with the mire ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... take this from me," said the Panther, a blunt frontiersman, "my comrades an' me ain't buyin' our lives at the price ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler
... a needle; I directed some very thin steel needles to be made about three inches long, and of such a temper, that they would bend double rather than break; and wrapped wax thread over about half an inch of the blunt end for a handle. One of these needles, when the pain occurred, was pushed about an inch into the painful part, and the pain instantly ceased; but I was not certain, whether the fear of the patient, or the stimulus of the puncture, occasioned the cessation ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... fault didn't lie in me nor in Russia, but in J. K. and the way he was writing. As I followed that blunt narrative of his journey through cities and factory towns, into deep forests, across snowy plains and through little hamlets half buried in snow and filled with the starving families of the men who had gone to the war, I tried to picture it all to myself—not ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... for an unusual length of time; namely, one leaf for ten and the other two for nine days. The bits of bone were surrounded all the time by acid secretion. When examined under a weak power, they were found quite softened, so that they were readily penetrated by a blunt needle, torn into fibres, or compressed. Dr. Klein was so kind as to make sections of both bones and examine them. He informs me that both presented the normal appearance of decalcified bone, with traces of the earthy salts ...
— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin
... surrendering one after another, and the greater part of the British army left Egypt, 12,000 men remaining behind to maintain order. The Egyptian government wished to try Arabi as a rebel in a secret tribunal. It was generally believed that this would have meant a death sentence. Mr. Wilfrid Blunt, a distinguished British Liberal and a friend of Arabi, who had often expressed his sympathy with the cause of the Nationalists in their endeavour to free Egypt from the slavery of the foreign bondholder, now raised ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... a hotchpotch of information of human follies, of contrasts, and of blunt stupidities of which he intended to make a very entertaining series of pages. I have not his talent for bringing such things together, but it may amuse the reader if I merely put in their order one or two of the ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... did not speak of her griefs to Harry Esmond, my lord was by no means reserved when in his cups, and spoke his mind very freely, bidding Harry in his coarse way, and with his blunt language, beware of all women as cheats, jades, jilts, and using other unmistakable monosyllables in speaking of them. Indeed, 'twas the fashion of the day, as I must own; and there's not a writer of my time of any note, with the exception ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... for at first glance, but, somehow, to give a second and not-forgetting look at. The third was the biggest of the three, and though lame, nimble, and all rough and alive with power; had you met him anywhere else, you would say he was a Liddesdale store-farmer, come of gentle blood; "a stout, blunt carle," as he says of himself, with the swing and stride and the eye of a man of the hills,—a large, sunny, out-of-door air all about him. On his broad and somewhat stooping shoulders was set that head which, with Shakespeare's and Bonaparte's, is ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various
... been elected to the senate by his enemies, but the impression made by his moderation and the fine restraint of his manner, combined with his reputation for scrupulous honesty, was not to be shaken by the subtle innuendos and blunt aspersions of the legal array ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... old man, suthin' busted there," remarked the sailor, taking the pipe from his mouth and quietly ramming its contents down with the end of his blunt forefinger. ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... a blunt voice, "be kind enough to call the attention of the king to the fact that my imperial master, who is very fond of resolute men and measures, prefers an open and resolute enemy to a neutral and irresolute ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... great wattles, the Barb with its short broad beak and eye-wattles, the short- faced Tumbler with its small conical beak, the Pouter with its great crop, long legs and body, the Fantail with its upraised, widely-expanded, well- feathered tail, the Turbit with its frill and short blunt beak, and the Jacobin with his hood. Now, if this same person could have viewed the pigeons kept before 1600 by Akber Khan in India and by Aldrovandi in Europe, he would have seen the Jacobin with a less perfect hood; the Turbit apparently ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... your counsel still be true; Blunt truths more mischief than nice falsehoods do; Men must be taught as if you taught them not, And things unknown proposed as things forgot. Without good breeding, truth is disapproved; That only ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... hung along the battle's edge, And thought: "Had I a sword of keener steel— That blue blade that the king's son bears—but this Blunt thing!" He snapped and flung it from his hand, And lowering crept ...
— Graded Memory Selections • Various
... became for a time a noted place for the publication of standard works, and books of various descriptions. It was here that the well-known Mr. Edmund M. Blunt, who subsequently removed to the city of New York, published his valuable and famous "American Coast Pilot," and, afterwards, the no less useful ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... you and I ought to be," said the big fellow with simple earnestness. "We're out here in a savage land, but we don't want to grow into savages, nor yet to be as blunt and gruff as two bears. I'm not going to forget that the dear old governor at home is a gentleman, even if his sons do rough it ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn
... the merit of expressing with blunt truthfulness the real attitude of the Franklin people, and of the backwoodsmen generally, towards the Indians. They never swerved from their intention of seizing the Indian lands. They preferred to gain their ends by treaty, and with the consent of the Indians; but if ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... stretched-out feet, where she could take a good look at the sleeper. His head was bent down over his breast, and the girl had to stoop a little to peer into the face. But a glance sent her reeling back against a chest of drawers. The top of the man's head had been crushed in by some blunt instrument. His forehead and the side of his face turned toward the window were covered with blood. His shirt and coat were soaked with it, in a long red stripe, and a dark pool had formed in a vague heart-shape on the ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... "That's rather a blunt question, under the circumstances, Mr. Burnit," said Jolter, "but I don't see why it shouldn't be answered as bluntly. It's a row of two blocks on the most notorious street of the town, frame shacks that are likely to be the start of a holocaust, ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... disappeared. She had been even more struck with the look of the girls who followed Crick than abashed by Crick's blunt praise. ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... continued Master George, observing that the Scot, as usual with his countrymen, when asked a blunt, straightforward question, took a little time before ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... in the well-known handwriting of Hariot, and is presumed to be the ' note of remembrance' for the speech, made in the Gate House, probably from dictation, during the night before the execution. It appears as if hurriedly penned with a blunt quill, and is on a narrow strip of thin foolscap paper such as Hariot used. It is about twelve inches long and nearly four inches wide, about one-third of the lower part of the paper being blank. There is no heading, date, or anything else on the paper. It is rather difficult to read, but ...
— Thomas Hariot • Henry Stevens
... named Lambert found the shoulder of a heifer had been smashed by some blunt instrument like a hammer. I myself had a couple of cows killed ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... familiar one that is gone. There was something mournful in the lingering of this aged lady—blind, deaf, and bereaved in her latter years; but she was not mournful, any more than she was insensible. Age did not blunt her feelings, nor deaden her interest in the events of the day. It seems not so very long ago that she said that the worst of living in such a place (as the Lake District), was its making one unwilling to go. It is too beautiful to let one be ready to leave it. Within a few ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... busiest, for it was Friday afternoon. John Blunt leant back in his comfortable chair and toyed with the key of the safe, while he tried to realize his new position. He, John Blunt, was junior partner in the great London firm of Macnaughton, Macnaughton, Macnaughton, ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne
... had none of the reticence or delicacy of our love: they went straight to the point, and the language in which, they expressed themselves is sometimes too coarse for our taste. The manners and customs of daily life among the Egyptians tended to blunt in them the feelings of modesty and refinement to which our civilization has accustomed us. Their children went about without clothes, or, at any rate, wore none until the age of puberty. Owing to the climate, both men ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... Sir Walter Blunt, Are Romishly affected, So's honest Frank of Howard's race, And slaughter is suspected. (14) But how the devill comes this about, That Papists are so loyall, And those that call themselves God's saints Like devils do destroy all? The ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... a sleepy, rough-looking man about 40 years of age, with a blunt red moustache, and the distant eyes which one sees in sailors. He looked at me, stared at me as at a person from a different country. ...
— The Insurrection in Dublin • James Stephens
... that Hyde neglected the caution that might have enabled him to shelter himself against these blasts. With all his experience of Courts, Hyde never learned the arts of a courtier. He was naively unconscious how little the steadfast honesty of his purpose could render his blunt plainness of diction palatable to a master, the chief feature of whose character was callous selfishness, and whose self-love might for the moment allow him to overlook, but never permitted him to forget, the liberty that presumed to curb his caprices ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... came a scuffle with the albino Whitey and the little ferret-faced man. Blunt, the swart artist in scrapping, having first let Denton grasp the bearing of his lesson, intervened, not without a certain quality of patronage. "Drop 'is 'air, Whitey, and let the man be," said his gross voice through a shower of indignities. "Can't you see ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... The blunt club of the lumberman's speech was scarcely a match for the sharp rapier of Raffer's tongue. As the crowd laughed it was evident that the fox-faced man was getting the verbal best ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... and gratitude from her for his unasked and inconvenient kindness. Lady Marney had struggled against this tyranny in the earlier days of their union. Innocent, inexperienced Lady Marney! As if it were possible for a wife to contend against a selfish husband, at once sharp-witted and blunt-hearted! She had appealed to him, she had even reproached him; she had wept, once she had knelt. But Lord Marney looked upon these demonstrations as the disordered sensibility of a girl unused to the marriage state, and ignorant of the wise authority of husbands, of which ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... frequent the ripening fields in April and late in September. Duck of various kinds abound where there are jhils, and snipe are to be got in marshy ground. The green parrots, crows, and vultures are familiar sights. Both the sharp-nosed (Garialis Gangetica, vern. gharial) and the blunt-nosed (Crocodilus palustris, vern. magar) crocodiles haunt the rivers. The fish are tasteless; the rohu and mahseer are the best. Poisonous snakes are the karait, the cobra, and Russell's viper. The first is sometimes an intruder into houses. Lizards ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... hardly necessary to say that he did not get very far into the crowd, and when his wife and George returned, laughing gayly, they found him standing outside, with a sulky face. "Look here, missus," said he; "you're a enjoying of yourself, but I'm not. You've got the blunt, so just hand over a few coppers, and I'll get a pint at ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... been the Princess Royal of England. And never had England a daughter who could have graced that position more perfectly. To a character so high and pure, and a taste so delicate and refined, as were almost out of place in that coarsest and most blunt of all the centuries, she united manners exquisitely gentle, gracious, and winning. The Lady Frances Basset was a woman taught by much and varied suffering; she had known both the climax of happiness and the depth of sorrow. The crushing blow of her ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... whom he permitted to inspect it. Gold and silver and copper they knew, and also tin, which they used for hardening the copper. But this new metal was altogether strange to them. It enormously exceeded copper in strength and hardness. Its edge did not, like that of their own weapons, blunt with usage, and they could well understand that, if armor could be formed of it, it would ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... lest he might draw aside the mysterious veil which shrouds the condition of the dead, is deserving of high praise. Admetus, it is true, and more especially his father, sink too much in our esteem from their selfish love of life; and Hercules appears, at first, blunt even to rudeness, afterwards more noble and worthy of himself, and at last jovial, when, for the sake of the joke, he introduces to Admetus his veiled wife as a ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... a stocky man with bushy red-gray eyebrows, a stubble of roan beard over his blunt, common face. One foot was short in his boot, as if he had lost his toes in a blizzard, a mark not uncommonly set by unfriendly nature on the men who defied its force in that country. He wore a duck shooting-jacket, the pockets of it bulging as ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... themselves red-hot then, were strangely hushed now. Loosed from their moorings, they huddled, together beneath him half under water, like so many great black beasts, cowed, it seemed, almost ashamed; here a huge breech showing, there a blunt snout, and ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... the west door, is a copy of A Collection of Cases and other Discourses to recover Dissenters to the Church of England, small 8vo., 1718. The Paraphrase of Erasmus may probably be added to the list (see Professor Blunt's Sketch of the History of the Reformation, 10th edit., p. 130.), though I cannot call to mind any church in which a copy of this work may now be found. In the noble minster church at Wimborne, Dorsetshire, is a rather large collection of books, comprising some ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 196, July 30, 1853 • Various
... possesses the secret. He knows how to create the right Chelsea atmosphere and he is most artful in leading his readers on, just as a little dog shows himself every now and then at a decoy and thus draws the inquisitive ducks after him till they drift in with all exit cut off. At one moment Mr. BLUNT gives you a glimpse of that bloodthirsty butcher, KING HENRY VIII. Then you pass to ANNE BOLEYN, CATHERINE PARR and the PRINCESS ELIZABETH. Further on there is a delightfully humorous account by WILLIAM DE MORGAN of his ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, March 19, 1919 • Various
... fury. Continually recurring, shock, mellay and rally overlapped, attack and repulse were inextricably mingled, the very lulls between the paroxysms were big with wrath. There was a point, too, where the river's bank became coastline, a blunt corner of land, which seemed to exasperate the sea out of all reason. A stiff breeze abetting them, the gigantic waves crashed upon it with a concussion that shook the air. All the royal rage of Ocean seemed to be concentrated on this little prominence. ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... hung; and Cressingham, suave, handsome, and well-dressed, told the court how Challoner had once attempted to murder Harman in the earlier part of the voyage. Barton, with his arm in a sling, corroborated the lie with blunt cheerfulness. ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke
... the 8th Corps, was another man of character in high command. He spoke of himself in the House of Commons one day as "a plain, blunt soldier," and the army roared with laughter from end to end. There was nothing plain or blunt about him. He was a man of airy imagination and a wide range of knowledge, and theories on life and war which he put ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs |
