"Chisel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... had caused considerable perturbation among a small mob of brumbies, or wild horses, consisting of some seven or eight mares and foals, led by a flea-bitten old grey stallion, who snorted angrily as he saw Finn, and minced forward toward the Wolfhound, his long chisel teeth bared, his four-foot tail billowing out behind him like a flag, and his black hoofs (the feet of mountain-bred brumbies are prodigiously hard and punishing in the attack) rising and falling from the dewy earth like ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... shape, whatever the consistence of the substance, or nature of the instrument employed; whether we carve a granite mountain, or a piece of box-wood, and whether we use, for our forming instrument axe, or hammer, or chisel, or our own hands, or water to soften, or fire to fuse;—whenever and however we bring a shapeless thing into shape, we do so under the laws of the one ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... picture in his mind of a career which has, as yet, no outward reality. He is tormented with the want of correspondence between things and thoughts. Michel Angelo's head is full of masculine and gigantic figures as gods walking, which make him savage until his furious chisel can render them into marble; and of architectural dreams, until a hundred stone-masons can lay them in courses of travertine. There is the like tempest in every good head in which some great benefit for the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... lifted the great lid into its place, and then, with a hammer and a little chisel which he had brought with him from the tools which had been used for the building of the pier, he packed the crevices about the lid with oakum. With a mariner's skill he worked, and when his job was finished, it would have been difficult for a drop of water to have found its way into the dome, ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... in the liberal arts, were veritable jewels, either from their elegance of form, or from the richness of their material, or the grace of their details. We find chefs-d'oeuvre, for instance on a geographical map, on the handle of a chisel, on the barrel of a musket. Our ancestors were not possessed with the same passion for speed and cheapness that possesses us. Industry lost, perhaps, but the arts were the gainers. The aim of the retrospective exhibition is well defined. It is to retrace with broad strokes by means of the ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, No. 733, January 11, 1890 • Various
... unpolished granite of the cross that marked it. No weeds were growing around it, and no moss was gathering upon it; the lettering, telling the name, and age, and date of death, of the man who lay beneath it, was as clear as if it had just come from the chisel of the graver. The tears sprang to Alice's eyes as she stood before it with reverently bowed head, looking down on Roland ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... prisoners, with the half-naked people, armed with guns and machetes, dancing drinking about them. As one barrel of rum was finished another was brought in, and the supply seemed endless. The days went by, and Mr. Ovens lost patience, and declared he would go and get a chisel and hammer and free the prisoners at all costs. "Na, na," replied Mary wisely, "we'll have a ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... fortunately, that which has suffered least is a beautiful figure of Eve. Her head is gone; but the flowing lines of the lovely torso are unbroken, and the round and graceful limbs are almost as perfect as when they came from the sculptor's chisel. This figure is so like the Venus de Medici that it might have ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... peculiarity of their teeth. No one, even though he be most ignorant of comparative anatomy, could mistake the rat or rabbit-like skull of a rodent for that of any other creature. The peculiar pincer-like form of the jaws, with their curved chisel-shaped teeth in front, mark the order at a glance. There is no complexity in their dentition. There are the cutters or incisors, and the grinders; and of the cutters there are never more than two in each ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... central: the east end terminates in a flat wall. The columns within are clustered and light; formed of stone, which unites, in an eminent degree, the advantage of great strength with that of yielding easily to the chisel, and which is dug from the quarries of Yvetot, near Valognes. The same quarries also furnished the principal part of the stone employed in the construction of the cathedral of Coutances. The plate exhibits at C. the elevation of the ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... is it?" said he; "but it is a crowbar, chisel, hammer and wrench, all in one. It only took me two nights to ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume VIII, No 25: May 21, 1887 • Various
... just distinguishable by the tiny glow of their lanterns. From these proceed the ring of steel—the muffled tinkling in the thick air we had heard—and we see that they are preparing for a "blast." With a long steel rod, or chisel, they are driving a way into the hard rock (geologists say there is little else in the Erzebirge than the primitive gneiss and granite), and thus prepare a deep, narrow chamber, within which a charge of gunpowder is placed and exploded. The ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... and superb paintings, the works of the greatest sculptors and artists of the east and west, of the past and the present. Figures by Thorwaldsen, Powers and other modern celebrities of the block and chisel stood beside antique masterpieces framed by the genius of Phidias and his brother sculptors of old Greece and Rome, masterpieces that had been torn from the ruins of antiquity by the hand of the untiring and enterprising excavator. Among the paintings ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... ambitious sculptor, tireless, lifts Chisel and hammer to the block at hand, Before my half-formed character I stand And ply the shining tools of mental gifts. I'll cut away a huge, unsightly side Of selfishness, and smooth to curves of grace The angles ...
— Poems of Passion • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... furnace and heated to such a point that the enamel melts and fills all the cuttings of the design, while the metal itself remains uninjured. This is an easier matter than might be supposed, because gold and silver, though soft under the chisel, will not melt except at a very high temperature. When the enamel has cooled, the whole surface is rubbed down to a perfect level, and the design appears with sharp outlines in ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... unturned, you mean. Clair, what shall we ruthlessly tear it away with? I hate to take a chisel ...
— Patty's Friends • Carolyn Wells
... benighted in the vale of ignorance, but it could not be one who would willingly devote his rich natural gifts to the purposes of wanton treachery. The ingenuous Alice gazed at his free air and proud carriage, as she would have looked upon some precious relic of the Grecian chisel, to which life had been imparted by the intervention of a miracle; while Heyward, though accustomed to see the perfection of form which abounds among the uncorrupted natives, openly expressed his admiration at such an unblemished specimen of the ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... occurrence. Titus Flamininus in particular (560) and Marcus Fulvius Nobilior (567), two leading champions of Roman Hellenism, as well as Lucius Paullus (587), were the means of filling the public buildings of Rome with the masterpieces of the Greek chisel. Here too the Romans had a dawning consciousness of the truth that an interest in art as well as an interest in poetry formed an essential part of Hellenic culture or, in other words, of modern civilization; but, while the appropriation of Greek poetry was impossible without some sort of poetical ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... treating as an end in itself what is properly a means. Like the Denver editor I quoted to you in a previous lecture, these scientific workers want to 'get there' in a hurry, forgetting that (to use another Americanism) the sharper the chisel the more ice it is likely to cut. You may observe this disposition—this suspicion of 'literature,' this thinly veiled contempt—in many a scientific man to-day; though because his language has changed from Latin to English, it is English he now chooses ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... themes of his marbles. Like Beethoven and Wagner he breaks the academic laws of his art, but then he is Rodin, and where he achieves magnificently lesser men would miserably perish. His large tumultuous music is for his chisel alone ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... suitable lengths, and splits the pieces into the correct widths. Next with an axe he trims off the rough edges, shapes the ends of the rails, and pierces the uprights with a centre-bit. Then he completes the mortise in a moment with a chisel, the rails being laid in position as guides to the size of the apertures. The rails are then driven home into the mortise holes, and he skips backwards and forwards, over the hurdle flat on the ground, ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... Why, in everything! Do not the consequences of luxury and magnificence bring ease and comfort to the hundreds of families that weave silks and laces, chisel gold and silver, carve precious stones, build palaces, sculpture the ebony of furniture, varnish carriages, breed thoroughbred horses, and cultivate rare flowers? Have not artists, architects, musicians, singers, danseuses, all that is art, pleasure, poetry, enchantment, ...
— A Cardinal Sin • Eugene Sue
... a dull brick-red; but in less exposed situations they are purple. If you wish them to live and increase, you must chip off a bit of the rock on which they are growing. With a chisel, or even a knife, you can do it without difficulty, for the soft slate scales and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... with a slip-knot, and push this a little more than half-way up the trunk. By having two ropes, that way, you prevent too much strain coming on any one part of the trunk. Then, after that, you take a mallet and chisel and round off the lower corners of the wedge, so that it will turn easily in the cleft. Then we take hold of the ropes, let her down gently, pick off the fruit, and haul her up again. That will ...
— The Bee-Man of Orn and Other Fanciful Tales • Frank R. Stockton
... of the Falkland Islands suggest that whales should be marked by a small projectile. This is much better than screwing the monster into a vice and carving its name and address on it with a chisel. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 5, 1920 • Various
... and he devoted himself to a more particular examination of the bars of the brig. They were two inches thick, but the case looked hopeful. Pursuing his investigations still farther, he found, under the steps, a saw, a hammer, a chisel, and some other tools, which Bitts, the carpenter, had placed there a few days before, and forgotten to remove. Clyde took up the saw; but just then, Peaks, with a book in his hand, seated himself at a table near the brig, and ...
— Up The Baltic - Young America in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark • Oliver Optic
... was hewed, and some not; and several large pieces were laid out upon the level surface of the yard, and the farmer and Amos were sitting upon them, working upon the frame. Amos was boring holes with an auger, and the farmer was cutting the holes thus made into a square form with a chisel. Josey was there, too, and Amelia. They were building a house of the blocks which had been sawed off from the ends of ...
— Jonas on a Farm in Winter • Jacob Abbott
... instruments. "Inferior to most animals as regards certain work that would have to be done with the aid of our organic resources alone, we are superior to all as soon as we set our tools at work. If the rodents with their sharp teeth cut wood better than we can, we do it still better with the ax, the chisel, the saw. Some birds, with the help of a strong beak, by repeated blows, penetrate the trunk of a tree: but the auger, the gimlet, the wimble do the same work better and more quickly. The knife is superior to the carnivore's teeth for tearing meat; the hoe better ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... much, Mary Chirgwin. I be punished wi' loss an' wi' sich work put on me as may lead to a terrible ugly plaace at the end. But theer 'tis. Like the chisel in the hand o' the carpenter, so I be a sharp tool ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... inscriptions were engraved, carved or impressed with sharp instruments, and of patterns characteristic of a graving tool, chisel or other form which could be adapted to particular substances like stone, leaves, metal or ivory plates, wax or ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... instruments the workman uses must be adapted to the purpose sought. Ask the expert craftsman what kind of plane or chisel you should buy for a piece of work you have in mind, and he will ask you just what ends you seek, what uses you would put them to. Ask the architect what materials you should have for the structure you would build, and he ...
— How to Teach Religion - Principles and Methods • George Herbert Betts
... She grasped the chisel and inserted it in the crack, pushing on it with all her might. But the door resisted, and Cynthia was just uttering ...
— The Boarded-Up House • Augusta Huiell Seaman
... naked stems and branches had been scraped by fine teeth. When the sap starts in the early spring, the squirrels add this to their scanty supplies. They perforate the bark of the branches of the maples with their chisel-like teeth, and suck the sweet liquid as it slowly oozes out. It is not much as food, but evidently ...
— Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers • John Burroughs
... conscious of existence when being liberated from my copper prison. I was, as I heard men say, ninety per cent. pure copper. Up to this time I had never been disturbed, but now sounded sharply the click of the hammer upon the cold chisel that rudely separated me from all that had been most closely associated with me. I heard men say that I was to be made over; and I was transported far away to a place where I was exposed to fierce fires, and without suffering I was made to assume ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 42, No. 3, March 1888 • Various
... no walks hereabouts, and the hills, three miles distant, are too remote for my reduced vitality. The intervening region is a plain of rock carved so smoothly, in places, as to appear artificially levelled with the chisel; large tracts of it are covered with the Indian fig (cactus). In the shade of these grotesque growths lives a dainty flora: trembling grasses of many kinds, rue, asphodel, thyme, the wild asparagus, a diminutive blue iris, as well as patches of saxifrage that deck ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... of this huge carnivorous dinosaur were found in England nearly a century ago, and the descriptions by Dean Buckland and Sir Richard Owen and the restorations due to the imaginative chisel of Waterhouse Hawkins, have made it familiar to most English readers. Unfortunately it was, and still remains, very imperfectly known. It was very closely related to the American Allosaurus and unquestionably similar ...
— Dinosaurs - With Special Reference to the American Museum Collections • William Diller Matthew
... and opening another of his lockers, drew forth a horn lantern, a mallet, and a chisel. Not a word was spoken as he lit the lantern and pass'd out of the cabin, Delia and ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... deposit, but he had never heard of it. There are, however, many such on the coasts of both Britain and Ireland. We staid at Oban for several hours, waiting the arrival of the Fort William steamer; and, taking out hammer and chisel from my bag, I stepped ashore to question my ancient acquaintance, the Old Red conglomerate, and was fortunate enough to meet on the pier-head, as I landed, one of the best of companions for assisting in such work, Mr. Colin Elder, of Isle Ornsay,—the gentleman who had so kindly furnished ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... illimitable; he possessed all the gifts an artist could possibly have, but from year to year his conviction of the futility of all earthly things grew to a profounder certainty. He had knocked at the iron gate of humanity with his hammer and his chisel; they had broken into fragments and sorrow made him dumb. There is a stage in the life of every genius when he comes to this gate, when he has to show his credentials and reveal the inmost kernel of his being. Dante attempted to ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... at some time had been varnished, and the cracks, or joints of the trap, had been filled and sealed with the varnish. I now hoped I had found the habitation of my troublesome and noisy guest. I procured a chisel and cut the varnished joint, and found that there was a trap door, as I supposed. By the aid of a long screwdriver I was able to move the door, but at that moment a repetition of the noise, immediately under ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... command And smiled upon him, fair and good— A perfect work of womanhood, Save that the eyes might never weep, Nor weary hands be crossed in sleep, Nor hair that fell from crown to wrist, Be brushed away, caressed and kissed. And as in awe I gazed on her, I saw the sculptor's chisel fall— I saw him sink, without a moan, Sink lifeless at the feet of stone, And lie there like a worshiper. Fame crossed the threshold of the hall, And ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... partly decayed limb of a tree, along the banks of a creek, beside a country road, or in an old orchard, will answer the purpose. Soft wood trees seem to be preferred, however. In the prairie states it occasionally selects strange nesting sites. It has been known to chisel through the weather boarding of a dwelling house, barns, and other buildings, and to nest in the hollow space between this and the cross beams; its nests have also been found in gate posts, in church towers, and in burrows of Kingfishers ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [March 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... they reproduce it with exactness. What arouses my wonder most is, that when I arrived no Sangley knew how to paint anything; but now they have so perfected themselves in this art that they have produced marvelous works with both the brush and the chisel.... What has pleased all of us here has been the arrival of a bookbinder from Mexico. He brought books with him, set up a bindery, and hired a Sangley who had offered his services to him. The Sangley secretly, and without his master noticing it, watched ...
— Doctrina Christiana • Anonymous
... examined, probably the more it may be admired. Even the famous capital fares not much better. "In point of fine architectural features, monuments of art, and magnificent structures, (excepting only the great Mosques,) the chisel of the mason, the marble, the granite, Constantinople is more destitute than any other great capital. But then, you are told that these objects are not in the style and taste of the people. Be it so; but then do not let the minds of those who cannot see for themselves be ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... putty, gradually allowed to harden, I obtained the mould I desired, in the dead of night, and afterward, whenever privacy, even for a few minutes, was mine, I drew from my bosom my sacred piece of sculpture, and worked upon it with knife and chisel alternately, as devotee never worked on sculptured crucifix. Never shall I forget the rapture, the ecstasy of that moment, in which, ensconced between my bed-head and the wall, I slowly turned the key, first thoroughly soaked in oil, in the morticed wards, and knew, ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... recollection of Canova's Venus, and even Moggs's Pandean Piper, which I reviewed in last number of the Universal, in declaring that Stickleback's work (it is a female, not a jack-ass) is the noblest effort of the English chisel; there is life about it—a power—a feeling—a sentiment—it is overwhelming! I shall express these ideas in print. Stickleback's fame is secured by a stupendous ass, at once so simple and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... my search for light was a conviction of the importance of his theory of art. I might almost say his religion of art, inasmuch as he had no traffic with anything that was not spontaneous, effervescing. To him a hammer and a chisel were actual and very real, and the plastic art appealed especially to him in its character of smiting. To smite from the stone, to finish with all a craftsman's cunning care—there seemed to him real joy in this; and so I think he felt the influence of ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... well-known sculptor as he talked one night to me of the spiritual way in which marble, so soft and yet so firm, answered like living material to his tool, sending flame into it, and then seemed, as with a voice, to welcome the emotion which, flowing from him through the chisel, passed ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... that Strathmore at once moulded and marred was his life: the statue which we all, as we sketch it, endow with the strength of the Milo, the glory of the Belvedere, the winged brilliance of the Perseus! which ever lies at its best; when the chisel has dropped from our hands, as they grow powerless and paralysed with death; like the mutilated torso; a fragment unfinished and broken, food for the ants and worms, buried in the sands that will quickly suck it down from sight or memory, with but touches of glory and of value ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... shadow corresponding to the ossified portion of the tumour, and continuous with that of the bone from which it is growing (Fig. 138). Operative interference is only indicated when the tumour is giving rise to inconvenience. It is then removed, its base or neck being divided by means of the chisel. The multiple variety of osteoma is considered with ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... gives a start in the education, but it is far short of what is necessary for one in his condition. If he is told that the chisel or bit for a lathe has a diamond point, or is round-nosed, and must be ground at a certain angle, he naturally wants to know, as all boys do, why it ...
— Practical Mechanics for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... now supplied will almost invariably take the grooves. Should difficulty in this respect, however, be experienced, it may be remedied by separating the brass ring from the iron at three or four points of the circumference. This should be done with a cold chisel, very slightly, and so as not to interfere with the loading. It is only necessary to sever the ...
— Ordnance Instructions for the United States Navy. - 1866. Fourth edition. • Bureau of Ordnance, USN
... birth—only in a land which, though poor and rough, lies spread over half the world, and spans versts the counting whereof would leave one with aching eyes. Nor are you a modishly-fashioned vehicle of the road—a thing of clamps and iron. Rather, you are a vehicle but shapen and fitted with the axe or chisel of some handy peasant of Yaroslav. Nor are you driven by a coachman clothed in German livery, but by a man bearded and mittened. See him as he mounts, and flourishes his whip, and breaks into a long-drawn song! Away like the wind go the horses, and the ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... board to see what assistance he could render. Just then Lieutenant Corbett staggered up towards the stern, exclaiming, "I have done it, and am alive!" In truth, he had cut the chain cable with a cold chisel, and in so doing, while leaning over the bows of the boat, had received five different wounds, which, with the addition of a severe one received on shore, rendered him almost helpless. His right arm was hanging to his side, but he still with his left worked ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... bloom of Nature, we complete our circuit with that which springs from the pencil, the chisel and the burin. Here we alight upon another instance of inadequate calculation. That the art-section of the exposition would fill a building three hundred and sixty-five by two hundred and ten feet, affording eighty-nine thousand ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... food, cropping leaves and grass, and gnawing the young shoots of trees. Its teeth are beautifully adapted to the purpose. In the front of both jaws are two long, flat teeth, with, sharp edges like a chisel. As so much filing and scraping wear away the teeth very fast, these keep on growing from the root. Each upper front tooth meets one in the lower jaw, so that the constant rubbing against each other keeps both the right length. ...
— Friends and Helpers • Sarah J. Eddy
... of the spear is a sumpit or blow-pipe. This is a small wooden tube about eight feet long. The smoothness and straightness of the bore is remarkable. The hole is drilled with an iron rod, one end of which is chisel-pointed, through a log of hard wood, which is afterwards pared down and rounded till it is about ...
— Children of Borneo • Edwin Herbert Gomes
... and Milton, for example, having evinced so little tendency to such tastes[49], that, throughout the whole of their pages, there is not, I fear, one single allusion to any of those great masters of the pencil and chisel, whose works, nevertheless, both had seen. That Lord Byron, though despising the imposture and jargon with which the worship of the Arts is, like other worships, clogged and mystified, felt deeply, more especially in sculpture, whatever imaged forth true grace ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... And in the hearts of all men here,— None e'er hath matched, in grief or grace, CANOVA'S day-dream of thy face, In those bright sculptured forms, more bright With true expression's breathing light, Than ever yet beneath the stroke Of chisel into life awoke. The one,[1] portraying what thou wert In thy first grief,—while yet the flower Of those young beauties was unhurt By sorrow's slow, consuming power; And mingling earth's seductive grace With heaven's subliming thoughts so well, We ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... with excitement. "Rather! Can't you see the difference? Sophocles carved his tragedies. He carved them in ivory, polished them up, back and front, till you can't see the marks of the chisel. And AEschylus jabbed his out of the naked granite where it stood, and left them there with the sea at their feet, and the mist round their heads, and the ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... to something like the bottom of a boat, that it might swim upright as it ought to do. It cost me near three months more to clear the inside, and work it out so as to make an exact boat of it; this I did, indeed, without fire, by mere mallet and chisel, and by the dint of hard labour, till I had brought it to be a very handsome periagua, and big enough to have carried six-and-twenty men, and consequently big enough to have carried ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... Militia; whose conduct was perfect, under difficulties and alarms; but proved unsuccessful. The terrified Magistrates, finding their Keys gone, and the conflagrative Russians at their gates, got blacksmiths on the instant; smote down, by chisel and mallet, the locked Drawbridge, smote open the Gates: 'Enter, O gracious Sirs; and may Czarish Majesty have mercy on us!' So that Arnim had small start for marchers on foot; and was overtaken about half-way. Would not yield still, though the odds ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Michael Angelo carving, Savonarola preaching. In the early years of Raphael's apprenticeship, the voice of the preacher had been silenced, but still, "with the ineffable left hand," Da Vinci painted, and still the marble chips dropped from Angelo's chisel as a David grew ...
— Great Artists, Vol 1. - Raphael, Rubens, Murillo, and Durer • Jennie Ellis Keysor
... our beard and whiskers. Boreas is a great barber, sir, with his north pole for a sign. Then as for frost!—I could tell you such incredible things of its intensity; our butter, for instance, was as hard as a rock; we were obliged to knock it off with a chisel and hammer, like a mason at a piece of granite, and it was necessary to be careful of your eyes at breakfast, the splinters used to fly about so; indeed, one of the party did lose the use of his eye from a butter-splinter. But the oddest thing of all was to watch two men talking to ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... another kind of experiment. I got a quantity of cast iron garden nails, an inch and a quarter long and 1/8 in. thick in the middle. These I weighed, and selected such as were nearly of the same weight. I then arranged matters so that by removing a prop I could cause the blunt edge of a steel chisel weighted to 4lb. 2oz., to fall from a given height upon the middle of the nail as it was supported from each end, 1-1/16 in. asunder. In order to secure the absolute fairness of the trials, the nails were taken at random, and an experiment with a cold nail was always alternated ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXIV., No. 12, March 18, 1871 • Various
... one row directly over the other, with their hardened surfaces facing. In reducing the food, the teeth of the lower jaw move against those of the upper, while the food is held by the tongue and cheeks between the grinding surfaces. The front teeth are thin and chisel-shaped. They do not meet so squarely as do the back ones, but their edges glide over each other, like the blades of scissors—a condition that adapts them to cutting off and separating the food (D, Fig. 65). The back teeth are broad ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.
... the major still remained in his prison, before he incurred any unnecessary risk with Maud. Of this fact he was soon assured; after which he took the precaution to conceal the pool of blood, by covering it with earth and stones. Making his other observations with care, and placing the saw and chisel, with the other tools, that had fallen from the captain's hand, when he received his death-wound, in a position to be handy, he ascended the path, and rejoined Maud. No word passed between our heroine and her guide. The latter motioned for her to follow; then he led ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... when we would have a mind to make one of dem flyin mare, we chillun would slip a ax to de woods wid us en chop down a nice little pine tree, so as dere would be a good big stump left in de ground. Den we would chisel de top of de stump down all round de edges till we had us a right sharp peg settin up in de middle of de stump. After dat was fixed, we would cut us another pole a little bit smaller den dat one en bore a hole in de middle of it to make it set down on dat peg. Oh, my Lord, ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 1 • Various
... it shows the new supremacy of man over the metal which, in former time, he scarcely could use save for rude and coarse implements. The steel of the blades of Damascus or Toledo is not here needed; nor that of the chisel, the knife-blade, the watch-spring, or the surgical instrument. But the steel of the mediaeval lance-head or sabre was hardly finer than that which is here built into a Castle, which the sea cannot shake, whose binding cement the rains cannot loosen, and before whose ...
— Opening Ceremonies of the New York and Brooklyn Bridge, May 24, 1883 • William C. Kingsley
... I claim the hinged chisel, c, in combination with the main piece, A, rod, B, brace piece, G, and holder, D, constructed substantially as described, and for ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... timbers for a dwelling. The plotniki in the villages are never any thing more than these general carpenters, and never acquire any regular knowledge of their business. The real Russian plotniki seldom carries any other tools with him than an axe and a chisel, and with these he wanders through all parts of the empire, ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... porphyry, a flat bowl of a beautiful light-coloured and translucent diorite, and a flat dish made of a darker variety of the same stone. This last is inscribed with the Ka name of Snefru, Neb Maat, the chisel-like sign of the maat being written on the convex side of the sickle, and the door-frame of the ...
— El Kab • J.E. Quibell
... of Philip Lebon, the inventor of lighting by gas, occurred on the 26th of June, at Chaumont, under the auspices of the Technical Gas Society of France. The statue, which we illustrate herewith, is due to the practiced chisel of the young sculptor Antide Pechine, who has perfectly understood his work, and has represented the inventor at the moment at which he observes a flame start from a glass balloon in which he had ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 611, September 17, 1887 • Various
... to use Woodworking Tools. Lessons in the uses of the hammer, knife, plane, rule, square, gauge, chisel, saw and ...
— Textiles • William H. Dooley
... of "Psyche."—There is a monument in Inistioge churchyard, co. Kilkenny, to the memory of the authoress of that beautiful poem Psyche, Mrs. Mary Tighe, with a statue of her, said to be by Flaxman, which statement, as to its being from the chisel of that celebrated sculptor, I have seen contradicted. She was the daughter of the Rev. W. Blackford, and married Mr. Henry Tighe of Woodstock, Ireland, in 1793. The inscription, which, I believe, is in existence, was not added to the monument in 1845. Can any of your correspondents ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 196, July 30, 1853 • Various
... you would have imagined she had descended from a pedestal; the pose of her head was like that of the Greek Venus; her delicate, dilating nostrils seemed carved by a cunning chisel from transparent ivory. She had a startled, wild air, such as one sees in pictures of huntress nymphs. She used a naturally fine voice with great effect; and had already cultivated, so far as she could, a ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... of his plan was yet to be effected; and he knew not how soon Rina might return. Hastily ransacking the cabin, he gathered together all their meagre rations; flour, sugar, beans, tea and pork; and he likewise commandeered everything that might be turned to use for a weapon; an axe, a chisel, and all knives. Three trips up and down the hill conveyed it to the dugout. Reembarking, he had no sooner brought it all to his own camp than Natalie's sharp eyes discovered Rina ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... were already talking to a tall man clad in his mason's blouse, who looked about forty, but was I daresay older, who had his mallet and chisel in hand; there were at work in the shed and on the scaffold about half a dozen men and two women, blouse-clad like the carles, while a very pretty woman who was not in the work but was dressed in an elegant suit of blue linen came sauntering up to us with ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... the critic may object against us, if our critic be in a severe mood (quod Dii avertant boni!) the rashness of the numismatist, who should hope, in recasting the exquisite medals of antique art, to retain—or even imperfectly imitate—the touches of the Ionic or the Corinthian chisel. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... twenty-sixth, twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth chapters of Exodus without being impressed with the fact that the man who wrote them had in him the spirit of the Master Workman—a King's Craftsman. His carving the ten commandments on tablets of stone also shows his skill with mallet and chisel, a talent he had acquired in Egypt, where Rameses the Second had thousands of men engaged in sculpture and in making inscriptions ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... marble, brought into submission by the same forces of Thought and Labour, you are astonished! Surely it is a simpler matter to control the living cells of one's own fleshly organisation and compel them to do the bidding of the dominating spirit than to chisel the semblance of a god out ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... presence, he made himself felt in all the varied exercise around him of those arts which address themselves first of all to sight. Unconsciously he defined a peculiar manner, alike of feeling and expression, to those skilful hands at work day by day with the chisel, the pencil, or the needle, in many an enduring form of exquisite fancy. In three successive phases or fashions might be traced, especially in the carved work, the humours he had determined. There was first wild gaiety, exuberant in a wreathing of life-like ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater
... marked 'Fragile'; a good-sized box, but uncommon light to handle. The steamer brought it across this morning, and I've carried it into the office and placed hammer and chisel handy." ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... did not condescend an answer. Newton went into the shop, and returned with a chisel and hammer. Taking a chair to stand upon, he very coolly ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... iron 1/16 in. thick, 24 in. in diameter. This can be done roughly with hammer and chisel and then smoothed up on an emery wheel, after which cut 24 radial slots 3/4 in. deep on its circumference by means of a hacksaw. On each side of the wheel at the center fasten a rectangular piece of 1/4-in. iron 3 by 4 in. and ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... understood. However, to go on, Tuxall and our friends here fixed up a plan on the prospects of a rich harvest from public curiosity and credulity. Tuxall planted a big rock under the barn, fixed it up appropriately with torch and chisel and sent for the Farleys, who are expert firework and balloon people, to ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... the flame of the lamp is directed against the old paint, which becomes soft and is removed with a chisel knife, or a scraper called a shavehook. The door was ajar and he had opened the top sash of the window for the purpose of letting in some fresh air, because the atmosphere of the room was foul with the fumes of the lamp and the smell of the burning paint, besides being heavy with moisture. The ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... which a sense of art is to be tried, their scorn is to a certain degree just. But suppose we try another standard. Let us put aside the altogether false opinion that art consists alone in something actually made, or painted, or decorated, in carvings, colourings, touches of brush or chisel. Let us look at our lives. I mean to say that there is no nation so thoroughly and earnestly artistic as the English in their lives, their joys, their thoughts, their hopes. Who loves nature like an Englishman? Do Italians ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... mixture of youth and age, of experience and of idealism. His big, bright eyes and curving mouth betokened enthusiasm, fire, a kindly philosophy; while the lines upon his forehead and the grey streaks in his abundant hair seemed to speak of deeper things. Life had indeed graven with its chisel lines and marks ineffaceable. It was the face of one who had suffered deeply, who had passed through more than one saddening experience. In repose one would have said the man was serious, grave to a fault; but when he smiled, it was the face of youth—ardent, eager, irresponsible—that ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... asleep. Dogs ran by in her imagination: among them a shaggy old poodle, whom she had seen that day in the street with a white patch on his eye and tufts of wool by his nose. Fedyushka ran after the poodle with a chisel in his hand, then all at once he too was covered with shaggy wool, and began merrily barking beside Kashtanka. Kashtanka and he goodnaturedly sniffed each other's noses and merrily ran down the street. ...
— The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... disappointments, and struggles against the giant coils of Fate, there is no report. He wrote the four Province House tales as a send-off to his second volume, as well as "The Toll-Gatherer's Day," "Footprints on the Seashore," "Snow-Flakes," and "Chippings with a Chisel," which are to be found in it. [Footnote: J. Hawthorne, 176.] There is a long blank in Hawthorne's diary during the winter of 1837-38 which may be owing to his indifference to the outer world at ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... notes me, he's that frenzied he backs off an' jumps ag'in the face of the rock stiff-laiged, an' strikes it with them hoofs of him. Which he does this noomerous times, an' every hoof cuts like a cold-chisel. It makes the sparks go spittin' an' flyin' ...
— Wolfville • Alfred Henry Lewis
... generally associated with the human figure in art, and thus sculpture, which deals chiefly with the human form, becomes familiar with geometric motives and acquires them. Through sculpture these motives enter architecture. But textile decoration pervades architecture before the sculptor's chisel begins to carve ornament in stone and before architecture has developed of itself the rudiments of a system of surface embellishment. Textile art in mats, covers, shelters, and draperies is intimately associated with floors and walls of houses, and the ...
— A Study Of The Textile Art In Its Relation To The Development Of Form And Ornament • William H. Holmes
... that the Museum of the Louvre contains a great number of pictures, of statues, and other objects of art, which, by the subjects they represent, bring eternally to the mind of the people the actions of gods, and kings, and priests; that these actions indicated by flattering brush or chisel are often delineated in such a way as to diminish the hatred that priests, kings, and gods should inspire to all good citizens; moreover, the admiration excited by the works of human genius ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... has a future; he appears well; he lives, let us say, by his art; he wants money; he tries to get it,—he fails. Civilization withholds cash from this man whose thought could master civilization, and ought to master it, and will master it some day with a brush, a chisel, with words, ideas, theories, systems. Civilization is atrocious! It denies bread to the men who give it luxury. It starves them on sneers and curses, the beggarly rascal! My words may be strong, but I shall not retract them. Well, this great but neglected man comes to us; we recognize ...
— The Illustrious Gaudissart • Honore de Balzac
... there!" admonished Just, already busy with chisel and hammer at the slender, flat box which lay upon the hall floor, in the centre of an interested group. He paused to glance up at his sister, where she had stopped upon the landing. "You act as if you didn't want to see what's in it," ...
— The Second Violin • Grace S. Richmond
... his ovens made the cook dive into his tent. Andy picked up a chisel dropped by the cook. He opened six casks standing on the ...
— Andy the Acrobat • Peter T. Harkness
... help, you'd be to any one! Well, let's see it." He knelt and inspected the tricycle, grumbling all the while and shaking his head angrily. "Who said it was broke?" he demanded presently. "Queer kind of break; looks like you'd pried the link apart with a cold-chisel." ...
— Behind the Line • Ralph Henry Barbour
... Virgin who stands close by her side. The slender old hand with its raised forefinger emphasises the lesson, and the loving expression of the wrinkled, ascetic face, the attentiveness of the Virgin and her slim young figure, make a touching picture, and a beautiful example of the power of the modern chisel. Yet faith in shrines and miraculous power is not, in this XX century, as pure nor as universal as in the days of the past; and Faith, in Provencal Apt which possesses so large a part of the Saint's body, is not as simple, and therefore not as strong as in Breton Auray which has but a part of ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... American pattern. There's nothing in the nature of a trademark to be found from end to end of the place; even the iron sluice-gate at the bottom of the brick tunnel has had the makers' name chipped off, apparently with a cold chisel. So you see they ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... always failing to meet the promise of the conception. My art! What can the cold marble be to me, when no longer animated by the soul with which my hope of your presence infused it? My art! Would to God that a divine flash of genius would impel me to wield the chisel but for one short month, and then that I might expire by the side of ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the verge of habitable earth. Full sixteen times since that disastrous day The face of nature hath renewed its youth; Still have I seen no change come over thine, That looked a grave amid a blooming world. Thou'rt like some moonless image, carved in stone By sculptor's chisel, that doth ever keep ...
— Demetrius - A Play • Frederich Schiller
... is from a bas-relief by Michelangelo, and as we examine it closely we discover that the sculptor's work was left unfinished. The rough marks of the chisel are still seen on the surface of the marble. A child's figure in the background is quite indistinct. Probably it was intended for the boy St. John the Baptist, the cousin of Jesus. The child Jesus himself is by no means completed; his right ...
— Michelangelo - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Master, With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... examined the block which the boy held. "You see, that's the under part where it lay in the wall, not weathered a bit. The other side has crumbled away, while the under part is comparatively fresh, and would show chisel marks if it ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn
... manner. He does not fear the shame of a warm and soft bed. Achilles, and Ajax, and Diomed, are not the only inmates of Elysium. Socrates, and Plato, and Homer, Apelles and Zeuxis, are all there too. The poet and the philosopher, the painter and the sculptor, rank as high through pen, pencil, and chisel, as the warrior by his blade and his bloody exploits. Art, in the North, finds no existence, and strikes no sympathizing chord in the bosoms of the sturdy Northmen. Art, to be perfect, requires a distinctness of conception, and an ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... here on business is requested to keep away!" said the magistrate, when, after much hammering and shaking, the door yielded to axe and chisel. "I request this, in the interest of the investigation. Orderly, don't let ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... a stewpan, for the skillet had been divided with a cold chisel and neither half was of the slightest use to anybody. After he had eaten his pilot-bread, after he had drunk his cup of bitter tea and crept into bed, he was prompted to amend his prayer, for he discovered that two blankers were not going to be enough for him. ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... Dante to her when she cared to listen. Niccolo da Correggio not only wrote sonnets and canzoni for her to sing but invented new patterns for her gowns; and Cristoforo Romano laid down the sculptor's chisel to play the lyre or viol for her pleasure. For her the wise man of Pavia, Lorenzo Gusnasco, fashioned cunningly wrought instruments, lutes and viols inlaid with ebony and ivory, and organs inscribed with Latin mottoes; and the wonderful tenor, Cordier, the priest of Louvain, ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... the steps that descend into the nave. The immense edifice seemed quite empty. The perpetual lamp burned before the altar, and wandering echoes thrilled in the upper galleries. Through a low-browed open door streamed across the aisle a flood of sunshine, and there was the sound of chisel and mallet from the same quarter, the stone-yard of the cathedral; but there was no visible worshipper—nothing to interrupt her mood ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... solid rock. Through these, according to tradition, there was nightly drawn a huge chain, secured by an immense padlock, for the protection of the haven and the armada which it contained. A ledge of rock had, by the assistance of the chisel and pickaxe, been formed into a sort of quay. The rock was of extremely hard consistence, and the task so difficult that, according to the fisherman, a labourer who wrought at the work might in the evening have carried home in his bonnet all the shivers which he had struck from the mass ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... these worthies to ourselves, who was sorrowfully contemplating the approaching day of his extinction by a nearly completed railway,—"a coachman, if he really be one, is fit for nothing else. The hand which has from boyhood—or rather horsekeeper-hood—grasped the reins, cannot close upon the chisel or the shuttle. He cannot sink into a book-keeper, for his fingers could as soon handle a lancet as a pen. His bread is gone when his stable-door is shut." We attempted to console him by pointing out that it was a law of nature for certain ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne
... an Iliad or a Paradise Lost, or tragedies like those of Aeschylus. She will never rival Demosthenes in producing a political oration, nor a massive philosophic history like Thucydides. She will not paint a Madonna like Raphael, nor chisel an Apollo Belvedere. The logic of Aristotle, the polemics of Augustine, the prodigious onsets of a Luther, the Institutes of a Calvin, the Novum Organum of Bacon, the Principia of Newton, the Cosmos of Humboldt—the like of these she will ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton
... Chapple watched him for a time with the interest of a brother-worker, for had he not tried to construct handy model steam-engines in his day? Indeed, yes. After a while, however, the role of spectator began to pall. He wanted to do something. Wandering round the room he found a chisel, and upon the instant, in direct contravention of the treaty respecting rotting, he sat down and started carving his name on a smooth deal board which looked as if nobody wanted it. The pair worked on in silence, broken only by an occasional hard breath as the toil grew exciting. ...
— The Politeness of Princes - and Other School Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... reason, let it remain!" answered the Count, who had grown pale as ashes at the aspect of his crime, thus strangely presented to him in another of the many guises under which guilt stares the criminal in the face. "Do not alter it! Chisel it, rather, in eternal marble! I will set it up in my oratory and keep it continually before my eyes. Sadder and more horrible is a face like this, alive with my own crime, than the dead skull which my ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... channel of publication. It contained successively "Footprints on the Beach," January; "Snowflakes," February; "Howe's Masquerade," May; "Edward Randolph's Portrait," July; "Lady Eleanore's Mantle," "Chippings with a Chisel," and a sketch of Jonathan Cilley, his friend who had just been shot by Graves in a duel, all in September; and these tales he signed as by The Author of "Twice-Told Tales." The Province House series was concluded by "Old Esther Dudley," ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... say, are idols dumb, Which men have wrought from wood or clay, Carven with chisel, shaped with thumb, A morning's task, an evening's play. You bid me turn my face on high Where the blue heaven the sun enthrones, And serve a viewless deity, Nor make my ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... one of the chief characteristics of mature genius is that it springs directly from conception to expression without much thought as to the means; a man who has used the same tools for a dozen years is not likely to take his chisel by the wrong end, nor to hesitate in choosing the right one for the stroke to be made, much less to 'take a sledge-hammer to kill a fly,' as the saying is. His unquiet mind has discovered some new and striking relation ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
... she sat, an attracting presence, though only fine, strong lines remained of beauty ravaged by illness and years. The "polished forehead" was furrowed by the chisel of suffering; the delicate high nose springing from her waxen, sunken face seemed somewhat eaglelike, but the face was still brilliant in its intensity of meaning and the carriage of her head was still noble. Not able to walk except with the assistance of a cane, her once exquisite hands ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... shorter assassin drew out an ugly knife and tried to put it between his lips like a lever or chisel. But Pinocchio, as quick as lightning, caught his hand with his teeth, and with one bite bit it clear off and spat it out. Imagine his astonishment when instead of a hand he perceived that a cat's paw ...
— Pinocchio - The Tale of a Puppet • C. Collodi
... Captain Mudge, "was wrought with the rudest kind of implements, and the labour bestowed on it must have been immense. The wood of the mortises was more bruised than cut, as if by a blunt stone chisel."* (* Mudge "Archaeologia" volume 26. ) Such a chisel lay on the floor of the hut, and by comparing it with the marks of the tool used in forming the mortises, they were found "to correspond exactly, even to the slight curved exterior of the chisel; but the ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... agreement was made by three words uttered in a low voice that none of them should leave the chamber. A servant was sent to fetch a carpenter. Their collateral hearts beat excitedly as they gathered round the treasured flooring, and watched their young apprentice giving the first blow with his chisel. The plank ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... and then interrupted by a roar from Peter or Joe, as they made fresh efforts to rise. At length, it was proposed by Dan Tyron to send for the stone cutter, and get him to cut them out of the wall with a chisel. I was literally unable to speak two sentences for laughing. The old woman meanwhile tried to soften the obdurate wall with melted butter and new milk—but in vain. I related the school story how Hannibal had worked through the Alps with hot vinegar and ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... were used required preparation. The stones must be quarried, squared, and fitted for the building with many a hard knock and cutting of the chisel. So must you and I, my readers, pass through the new birth, and be prepared by the Holy Spirit to fit us for the spiritual building composed of living stones; and if not made meet for that building, we shall be eventually found lifting up our eyes ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... to see where the power of his brush lay. No timid, uncertain, niggling stroke ever came from that torso or forearm or thigh. He hewed with a broad axe, not with a chisel, and he hewed true—that was the joy of it. The men of Meissonier's time, like the old Dutchmen, worked from their knuckle joints. These new painters, in their new technique—new to some—old really, as that of Velasquez and Frans ...
— The Man In The High-Water Boots - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... those days factories. The master of a craft worked, surrounded by his craftsmen and apprentices. Every wheel and spring were made upon the premises, fashioned and finished with chisel and file; and there was an interest in the work far beyond any which it possesses in the present day, when watches are turned out wholesale, the separate parts being prepared by machinery, and the work of the artisan consisting solely in the ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty
... all his self control to repress a cry, for in the comparative gloom of the passage beyond, he could just make out the figure of Vera, who stood there with her finger on her lip as if imposing silence. He could see that in her hand she held something that looked like a chisel. A moment later she flitted away once more, leaving Gurdon to puzzle his brain as to what ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White
... No longer the canvas and the pigments, but the marble and the chisel. When the nights are calm and the moon full, I go out to gaze upon the wonderful purity of the moonlight and the snow. The air is full of latent fire, and the cold warms me—after a different fashion from that of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... work. We must give the Indian the Gospel of the Son of God as his only safeguard for the life that now is as well as that which is to come. Civilization, education alone can never lift the Indian to his true position. You may take a rough block of marble and chisel it never so skillfully into some matchless human form, and it is marble still, cold and lifeless. Take the rude Indian and educate him, and he is still an Indian. He must be quickened by the breath of ...
— The American Missionary, Volume 42, No. 12, December, 1888 • Various
... of the well-sinking naturally depends upon the quality of the soil; if rock is to be cut through, it is worked with a mason's axe and the cold chisel. Fortunately the geological formation is principally sedimentary limestone, which offers no great resistance. At length the water is reached. The well is now left open for a few days that an opinion may be formed of the power; if favourable, another precisely similar ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... and so shaped that the iron would do most of the cutting and scratching, and the handle acted merely as a wedge to assist the operation. I also saw a man making a knife by cutting a thick piece of iron with a cold chisel, afterward to be pounded out flat and ground down on stones. The entire operation would probably take about three or four weeks with the poor tools ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... was unquestionably E. H. Harriman. In the mansion that he built at Arden, there were a hundred telephones, sixty of them linked to the long-distance lines. What the brush is to the artist, what the chisel is to the sculptor, the telephone was to Harriman. He built his fortune with it. It was in his library, his bathroom, his private car, his camp in the Oregon wilder-ness. No transaction was too large or too involved to be settled over its wires. ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... went on talkin' and the blacksmith was makin' a rod and he took it out of the forge and put it on the anvil and it sputtered sparks, and he pounded it around, and finally he took a chisel and cut off a piece, and I watched it grow from dull red till it got black and looked like a piece of licorice. So I went and picked it up. Gee! but it just cooked my fingers, and I yelled. "Thar's your ...
— Mitch Miller • Edgar Lee Masters
... Guercino's Holy Magdalen. She has pretty, modest ways of looking down under those pale, drooping lids with her calm, confiding eyes, and if the mouth is somewhat large, the teeth are white and even, and the lips are coral-tinted. The nose is straight and slender, and suggests the chisel of Phidias, and from the expansive brow we infer a broad culture and comprehensive understanding. It is the seat of Philosophy, as well as ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland |
