"Grindstone" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... But since simians love to be noticed, it does not content them to have a conception; they must wrestle with it until it takes a form in which others can see it. They doom the artistic impulse to toil with its nose to the grindstone, until their idea is expressed in a book or a statue. Are they right? I have doubts. The artistic impulse seems not to wish to produce finished work. It certainly deserts us half-way, after the idea is born; and if we go on, art is labor. With the ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.
... wouldst do but for rain? What's a fair house without water coming to it! Let me see how a smith can work, if he have not his trough standing by him. What sets an edge on a knife? the grindstone alone? No, the moist element poured upon it, which grinds out all gaps, sets a point upon it, and scours it as bright as the firmament. So I tell thee, give a soldier wine before he goes to battle; it grinds out all gaps, it makes him forget ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... to ask Eleanor if she was satisfied with it. Every line of her face expressed radiant happiness, and though she spoke jestingly of the way in which her nose was kept to the grindstone, Margaret knew that she was really revelling in this chance of getting the instruction in Italian that she wanted. And as for the singing lessons, their value, she declared vehemently, was beyond price to her. Any time during the last two years she would, she said, have gladly lived in a hovel, fared ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler
... herself capable of doing a few days earlier. She had travelled far in search of something new, and this was the first time she had tasted the biting green tea with the reek of the smoke about it from a blackened pannikin. Grindstone bread baked in a hole in the ground was also a novelty, and the crumbling flakes of salmon smoked by some Siwash Indian a delicacy, while she wondered if it was only the keen mountain air which made the flesh of the big trout so good, or whether it ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... to accompany Capt. Clark had ground and prepared their axes and adds this evening in order to prepare for an early departure in the morning. we have on this as well as on many former occasions found a small grindstone which I brought with me from Harper's ferry extreemly convenient to us. if we find trees at the place mentioned sufficiently large for our purposes it will be extreemly fortunate; for we have not seen one for many miles below the entrance of musselshell River to this ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... lips of the commander that became immortal on the frontier and made the petitioners nearly frantic. For a week the trio was the butt of all the wits at Fort Warrener. And yet the entire commissioned force felt that they were being kept at the grindstone because of the frivolity of these few youngsters, and they did not like it. All the same the cavalrymen stuck up for their colonel, and the infantrymen respected him, and the matinees were business-like and profitable. They were rarely unpleasant in any feature; but this particular ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... Jedge? Where'd she get all that money she's been flamming about with, and that grand house, better than new, with all the latest improvements. Wa'n't we some jays to be took in like we was by a little, white-faced chit like her? Couldn't see through a grindstone with a hole in it! Bolton House.... And an automobile to fetch the old jailbird home in. Wa'n't ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... Norris, "the trouble with you is that you never want to do anything; you always want to do something else. I begin to think that there are compensations to a man in having fate hold his nose to the grindstone. He ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... definite idea as to the constitution of the stellar system was Thomas Wright, the son of a carpenter living at Byer's Green, near Durham. With him originated what has been called the "Grindstone Theory" of the universe, which regarded the Milky Way as the projection on the sphere of a stratum or disc of stars (our sun occupying a position near the centre), similar in magnitude and distribution ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... mischievous stranger or other - they're always about - and the best thing you can do is, to come out of that. Now you know;' here his countenance expressed marvellous acuteness; 'I can see as far into a grindstone as another man; farther than a good many, perhaps, because I had my nose well kept to it when I was young. I see traces of the turtle soup, and venison, and gold spoon in this. Yes, I do!' cried Mr. Bounderby, shaking his head with obstinate ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... brought out his true but latent courage. What were a troop of vulgar and ill-mannered players to him? What was a dramatic agent but a harpy? He was worth a whole theatre full of actors such as had worked almost his ruin. Go back and put his nose down to the grindstone, his desk, where, at least they paid men enough to live on, and did not make it necessary to cheat ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... it. I came to that conclusion, in regard to myself, long and long ago. Sick wife, hungry children, and four or five backs to cover; no wonder a poor man's nose is ever on the grindstone. For my part, I am sick of it. When I was a single man, I could go where I pleased, and do what I pleased; and I always had money in my pocket. Now I am tied down to one place, and grumbled at eternally; ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... with it, I wonder? Ye arena getting stiff yet, I reckon. I hate to see a man's arms drop down as if he was shot, before the clock's fairly struck, just as if he'd never a bit o' pride and delight in 's work. The very grindstone 'ull go on turning a bit after you ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... Area of a Triangle. Surface of a Ball. Solidity of a Sphere. Contents of a Cone. Capacity of a Pipe. Capacity of Tanks. To Toughen Aluminum. Amalgams. Prevent Boiler Scaling. Diamond Test. Making Glue Insoluble in Water. Taking Glaze Out of Grindstone. To Find Speeds of Pulleys. To Find the Diameters Required. To Prevent Belts from Slipping. Removing Boiler Scale. Gold Bronze. Cleaning Rusted Utensils. To Prevent Plaster of Paris from Setting Quickly. The Measurement of ...
— Practical Mechanics for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... sticks, run and yell, dart to and fro, like young Indians. They rob bird's nests, steal the eggs, pierce them and blow them. They capture the young birds, and are not above killing the parents that fly frantically to the rescue. I knew of boys who ground captured birds to death on a grindstone. Who has not seen a boy fling stones at ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... gigantic groove provided for it, till it lighted on the edge of both wheels at the same instant. Of course it would not rest there, not the ten-thousandth part of a second. It would be snapped upward, as a drop of water from a grindstone. Upward and upward; but the heavier wheel would have deflected it a little from the vertical. Upward and northward it would rise, therefore, till it had passed the axis of the world. It would, of course, feel the world's attraction all the ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... to a case of extensive laceration of the leg, with profuse hemorrhage. The case was urgent, and the patient was sinking. No instruments were at hand. He called for a carving-knife, which he sharpened on a grindstone and finished on a razor-strap, filed a hand-saw, amputated the limb, dressed the stump, left the patient in safety, and drove home with his father to breakfast. The ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... company, and could do as he pleased, he might manage to live here for a few years very comfortably; but we have to associate with some rough characters there in the barracks, and the officers hold us with our noses close to the grindstone all the time. They look upon a private as little better than a dog, and they'll slap him into the guard-house on the slightest provocation. Now, this is one of the stables; it will accommodate seventy horses. Those you see in here are blooded animals, and they belong ...
— George at the Fort - Life Among the Soldiers • Harry Castlemon
... steels of a lower grade. For forging it should be heated slowly and uniformly to a bright red and only light blows used as the heat dies out. Do not hammer at all at a black heat. Reheat slowly to a dark red for hardening and quench in warm water. Grind on a wet grindstone. ...
— The Working of Steel - Annealing, Heat Treating and Hardening of Carbon and Alloy Steel • Fred H. Colvin
... It is practically the same. I have a good knife with two parallel blades that can be taken off, and put on the grindstone, and got as sharp as a razor. For some things I use a ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Fourth Annual Meeting - Washington D.C. November 18 and 19, 1913 • Various
... was understood among the commonality that the French were determined to subdue and make a conquest of Britain, as they had done of all the rest of Europe, holding the noses of every continental king and potentate to the grindstone, there was a prodigious stir and motion in all the hearts and pulses of Scotland, and no where in a more vehement degree than in Gudetown. But, for some reason or an other which I could never dive into the bottom of, there was a slackness or backwardness on ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... I slept; only to awake to new horrors; for now I heard cautious footsteps and whispered voices, and outside the grindstone was at work making something very sharp. Then the door opened, and a smothered voice said, 'Mother, ...
— Lewie - Or, The Bended Twig • Cousin Cicely
... heap. But what could I do, wife? We must hear the news of Gerard. I saw that in thine eyes, and felt it in my own heart. And she is backed by our undutiful but still beloved son, and so is she stronger than we, and brings our noses down to the grindstone, the sly, cruel jade. But never heed. We will hear the letter; and then let her go unblessed ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... and crash, through all the charging, cheering and volleying, while the ever-thinning, shortening gray lines were being crowded back from rise to rise—back, back through field, grove, hedge, worm-fence and farmyard, clear back to Grindstone Ford, Bayou Pierre, and with the cavalry, Harper's, cut off and driven up eastward through the town—the enraged old brigadier watched and saw. He saw far, saw close, with blasphemous exultation, how Hilary and his guns, ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... consolation was the large liberty I enjoyed in the woods and fields with my father on Saturdays, or with my brothers Charles and Jacob on their long botanizing excursions, or in the moments of leisure when I was not wanted to turn the grindstone or blow the bellows in the workshop. Those long walks, in which I was indefatigable, and the days or nights when I went fishing with my brother Jacob, who was ten years older than myself, and who inherited the wandering and adventurous longings of my father, are the only things I can ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... such set trash of phrase Ineffably—legitimately vile, That even its grossest flatterers dare not praise, Nor foes—all nations—condescend to smile,— Nor even a sprightly blunder's spark can blaze From that Ixion grindstone's ceaseless toil, That turns and turns to give the world a notion Of ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... rain, they said, was produced by the rapid whirling of the earth by a stout mythical being called Yek. The water of the ocean was thus thrown up, to descend again in showers, just as it is thrown off a wet grindstone. They did not, however, understand why the ocean water should be salt, while the rain from it is fresh. The soil, they said, for the plants to grow on is formed by the washing of the rain on the rocks and gradually accumulating. The grinding ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... farmers, who encouraged his assumptions. Meanwhile Jimmy Wilson would be elsewhere in the train, busy with his lessons for the morrow; for Jimmy had to help in the Emporium of nights—his father kept him to the grindstone. Jimmy had no more real ability than young Gourlay, but infinitely more caution. He was one of the gimlet characters who, by diligence and memory, gain prizes in their school days—and are fools for the ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... my friends, and attention to one's own business; but to these we must add frugality, if we would make our industry more certainly successful. A man may, if he knows not how to save as he gets, keep his nose all his life to the grindstone, and die not worth a groat at last. A fat kitchen makes a lean will, as Poor Richard ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus
... over the garden and the fruit-trees, carrying food to their nests, or teaching their young broods to fly and to chirp the songs of summer. And from the woodshed the shrill note of the scythe under the action of the grindstone. No such vivid realization of ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... although, to be sure, the master does say he's the cleverest fellow in the school; but he must be reined up a bit now. I'll clap on a double curb and martingale. I'll get him a situation in the counting-room at the fort (puff), where he'll have his nose held tight to the grindstone. Yes, I'll fix both their flints to-morrow;" and old Mr. Kennedy gave vent to another puff so thick and long that it seemed as if all the previous puffs had concealed themselves up to this moment within his capacious chest, and rushed out at last in ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... bustling streets they go, All was alive with martial show; At every turn, with dinning clang, The armourer's anvil clashed and rang; Or toiled the swarthy smith, to wheel The bar that arms the charger's heel; Or axe or falchion to the side Of jarring grindstone was applied. Page, groom, and squire, with hurrying pace, Through street and lane and market-place Bore lance, or casque, or sword; While burghers, with important face, Described each new-come lord, Discussed his lineage, told his name, His ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... great king of France, which also was in the same yeare after he was made emperour of the west, and about the second yeare of Conwall king of Scots. Whilest this Egbert remained in exile, he turned his aduersaries into an occasion of his valiancie, as it had beene a grindstone to grind awaie and remoue the rust of sluggish slouthfulnes, in so much that hawnting the wars in France, in seruice of Charles the great, he atteined to great knowledge and experience, both in matters appertaining to the wars, and likewise to the well ordering of the common wealth in time ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (6 of 8) - The Sixt Booke of the Historie of England • Raphael Holinshed
... fearful accidents occasionally happen where large grindstones are being driven at a high speed. The velocity of rotation becomes too great for the tenacity of the stone to withstand the stress; a rupture takes place, the stone flies in pieces, and huge fragments are hurled around. For each particular grindstone there is a certain special velocity depending upon its actual materials and character, at which it would inevitably fly in pieces. I have once before likened our earth to a wheel; now let me liken it to a grindstone. There is therefore ...
— Time and Tide - A Romance of the Moon • Robert S. (Robert Stawell) Ball
... with a single spring, and fled away like lightning, all the hyaenas in full pursuit uttering great cries. As he turned a corner the little hare cut off both his ears, so that they should not know him, and pretended to be working at a grindstone which lay there. ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various
... the hed. The crowd sed it was high old sport, but I couldn't zackly see where the lafture come in. I riz and we embraced agin. We careered madly to a steep bank, when I got the upper hands of my antaggernist and threw him into the raveen. He fell about forty feet, striking a grindstone pretty hard. I understood he was injured. I ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 2 • Charles Farrar Browne
... you know what the potter's-wheel is? It's as old as the hills and it's in the Bible, but I guess everybody don't know what it is. It looks as if it was made of hard, smooth, baked white clay, and is something like a grindstone, only not half as thick. The grindstone stands up, but this lays flat, with its round side turned up, like the head of a barrel. And it's set on a pivot, like the needle of ...
— Illustrated Science for Boys and Girls • Anonymous
... Lord, man, you're not the first nor the ten-thousandth man who has broken down from overwork. Because my axe becomes dull I'm not going to refuse to use it when it comes back from the grindstone with a brighter edge than ever on it, am I? Wait till you see your reception. Some of those fellows have been making a lot of mistakes in your absence—have been trying to do things too big for them. They'll be only too glad ...
— Mrs. Red Pepper • Grace S. Richmond
... through a grindstone that had a hole in its center. He knew very well that the shrewd farmer wanted to make use of them in order to protect his property; but it served Elmer's purpose just as well to readily agree ...
— Afloat - or, Adventures on Watery Trails • Alan Douglas
... running to waste. It required Daylight's breaking of extra horses to pay for the materials, and the brother devoted a three weeks' vacation to assisting, and together they installed a Pelting wheel. Besides sawing wood and turning his lathe and grindstone, Daylight connected the power with the churn; but his great triumph was when he put his arm around Dede's waist and led her out to inspect a washing-machine, run by the Pelton wheel, which really worked and ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... &c (arms) 727; bodkin &c (perforator) 262; belduque^, bowie knife^, paring knife; bushwhacker [U.S.]; drawing knife, drawing shave; microtome [Micro.]; chisel, screwdriver blade; flint blade; guillotine. sharpener, hone, strop; grindstone, whetstone; novaculite^; steel, emery. V. be sharp &c adj.; taper to a point; bristle with. render sharp &c adj.; sharpen, point, aculeate, whet, barb, spiculate^, set, strop, grind; chip (flint). cut &c (sunder) 44. Adj. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Muscovy Duck quills for still Waters. Others the best sound Cork without flaws or holes, bored through with a hot Iron, and a Quill of a fit proportion put into it; then pared into a pyramidal Form, or in the fashion of a small Pear, to what bigness you please, and ground smooth with Grindstone or Pumice; this is ...
— The School of Recreation (1696 edition) • Robert Howlett
... hardly afford to set up one," he confided. "And anyway, I haven't much leisure. Of course, when a good fellow like you comes along I can take a day off, once in a way. But generally my nose is down to the grindstone." ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... grim. He deemed that the proper time had arrived for putting his personal ax upon the whirling grindstone. He looked ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... be home again," he breathed. "Now that I don't have to keep my nose to the grindstone I'm going to come home oftener. Things change so. We may never all ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith
... forthwith in the workshops and tool-sheds attached to the home premises of Stoke Revel, and presently emerged, furnished with the object he had made diligent and particular search for; this he proceeded to carry in an inconspicuous way to a distant cottage where he knew there was a grindstone. He spent a happy hour with the object, the grindstone, and a pail of water. Whirr, whirr, whirr, sang the grindstone, now softly, now loudly—"this is an axe, an axe, an axe, and a strong arm ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... do be right. Will I lose all the good we have gained for the sake o' bad temper? The end's in sight,—the blessed end o' the secrecy, an' the weary struggle o' keepin' me gineral's nose to the grindstone, and now to leave go? Not while Cleena Keegan draws a free breath, an' can handle a silly ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... Section of the cliffs of the South Joggins, near Minudie, Nova Scotia (from north to south through coal with upright trees and sandstone and shale). c. Grindstone. d, g. Alternations of sandstone, shale, and coal containing upright trees. e, f. Portion of cliff, given on a larger scale in Figure 440. f. Four-foot coal, main seam. h, i. Shale with fresh-water mussels, ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... seemed capable of almost any mental feat? True, he had done nothing beyond give the impression that he could do a great deal if he chose; "and," thought Allan Meredith, "carry home a sheaf of bills, I expect. He ought to have been the moneyed man, and I the one obliged to keep to the grindstone, perhaps. I don't know; the very necessity for doing something may have given him the kind of impetus he needed—to say nothing of having to keep up the prestige of an ancient name, which must be ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... Krak now; then I did not appreciate the change in her demeanour. On questioning Victoria, I found that Krak's softness did not extend beyond the limits of my sickroom; she had indeed ceased the knuckle-rapping, but in its place she curtailed Victoria's liberty and kept her nose to the grindstone pitilessly. Why should caresses be confined to the sick, and kindness be bought only at the price of threatened death? I was inclined to refuse to kiss Krak, but my mother made such a point of compliance that I yielded reluctantly. In ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... adjoining this one was where Montesquieu's secretary worked. He was the drudge of a literary man, who was probably not exempt from the constitutional irritability of those who carry a whirling grindstone within their brains for the sharpening and polishing of thought. The unremembered scribe may have done good service to literature while undergoing his ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... a half-hour of only moderately enjoyable conversation, for Georgie kept the grindstone of the misery of his lot without Atkinson, and the pleasure of companionship firmly to the Colonel's nose. It was no use for him to attempt to change the subject to the approaching tableaux, to a vague rumour that Piggy had fallen face downwards in the ducking-pond, ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... tribe, and set to using those same brains in the making of hatchets and ornaments. A few days passed and he was yet further enlarged. Powhatan longed for two of the great guns possessed by the white men and for a grindstone. He would send Smith back to Jamestown if in return he was sure of getting those treasures. It is to be supposed that Smith promised him guns and grindstones as many ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... part makes of his freedom is to be thoroughly, happily idle. This idleness, if he has a backbone and a call to work, only lasts a term or two; and no one who knows how a German boy is held to the grindstone for twelve years of school life can grudge him a holiday. But the odd fact is, that the Briton who leaves school a man is more under control at Oxford or Cambridge than the German at Heidelberg who ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... wind, which was increasing, and a nasty, short sea rising. After a couple of hours we saw her yards squared, and the vessel put back and she anchored near to us. In the afternoon, the wind having moderated, an officer from her came to buy a grindstone. ...
— Notes by the Way in A Sailor's Life • Arthur E. Knights
... lady, I am already in your debt for permitting my scape-grace nephew and me to know you and your daughter. I have had my nose at the grindstone of business for so many years that I feared it had grown out of my power to make new friends; but I begin to see that I have not lost the knack. Perhaps my somber presence is tolerated because of my gay, jolly boy," and Mr. Kinsella gazed rather wistfully after Pierce, who had crossed ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed
... rocks included granite, gneisses, syenites and norite. This series only inadequately represented the New York granites. Among the most striking examples shown were the coarse grained red granite from Grindstone island in the St. Lawrence river, the Mohican granite from Peekskill, Westchester county, which is being extensively used in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York city, and the dark green labradorite rock known as the Ausable ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis
... you have chosen, and to know your children. Our ways have gone very far apart—too far—since the old days when we climbed out of the windows of la cure with a sheet, and tramped the mountains all night long. Do you remember? I've had my nose on the grindstone ever since, and you've worked hard too, judging by your name in publishers' lists. I hope your books are a great success. I'm ashamed I've never any time to read now. But I'm "retired" from business at last and hope to do ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... one's self, and that I should have eternity, so to speak, to rest. I travelled energetically; I went everywhere and saw everything; took as many letters as possible, and made as many acquaintances. In short, I held my nose to the grindstone. The upshot of it all is that I have got rid of a superstition. We have so many, that one the less— perhaps the biggest of all—makes a real difference in one's comfort. The superstition in question—of course you have it—is that there is no salvation ...
— The Point of View • Henry James
... same Melican," he told Martin, as he industriously turned the grindstone beneath the cleaver's edge. "Me like all same lepublic—me fight like devil all same time when China war. Now Jap he come take China. No good. Me kill um Jap. Velly good. All same chop ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... landlord was to take place in the Boches' room. Monsieur Marescot, a wealthy cutler of the Rue de la Paix, had at one time turned a grindstone through the streets. He was now stated to be worth several millions. He was a man of fifty-five, large and big-boned. Even though he now wore a decoration in his button-hole, his huge hands were still those of a former workingman. It was his joy to carry off the scissors ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... stone or iron, fed with sand and water, which trickled slowly down upon them from a trough overhead. These rapidly cut away the surface of glass presented to them, leaving it rough and opaque. The article was next presented to a smooth grindstone, that removed the roughness, and left the appearance of fine ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... iron placed in the centre of a grindstone to protect the hole in the centre from the action of the axis; it is a charge frequently borne on escutcheons of persons connected ...
— The Manual of Heraldry; Fifth Edition • Anonymous
... very common forms of evil spirits and lost souls driven away from the sacred building. A legend is connected with a corbel stone near the west end of the north aisle. It is fashioned into the likeness of a grindstone and it is handed down by tradition that once upon a time towards the end of the twelfth century or the beginning of the thirteenth a nobleman ran away with a blacksmith's wife, but afterwards repented of his sin and had imposed on him as penance the completion ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: A Short Account of Romsey Abbey • Thomas Perkins
... for an assault. He saw it all now. He had been, in some vague way, deluded. He had given confidential audience to the niece of one of the Great Claimants before Congress. The inevitable axe had come to the grindstone. What might not this woman dare ask of him? He was the more implacable that he felt he had already been prepossessed—and honestly prepossessed—in her favor. He was angry with her for having pleased him. Under the icy polish ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... you how it is. I want rest and quiet, and the woods, for a week or two. This is how it happened: I have been steadily at the grindstone, except for a while in the hospital; and that, you will admit, is not much of a vacation. The work interests me, and I am always in the thick of it. Now, it's like this in the newspaper business: ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... and soon had a lot of tall trees down. Charley put up his forge and his grindstone, to keep the ax sharp, and I staid with him. Dick went tailing the cattle, and the overseer sat on a log, and looked on. The second day a mob of blacks came down on the opposite side of the river. They were quite wild, regular myals, but some of our men with green branches, went ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... crossing at five the next morning. Before the leading brigade was over it was fired upon by the enemy from a commanding position; but they were soon driven off. It was evident that the enemy was covering a retreat from Grand Gulf to Vicksburg. Every commanding position from this (Grindstone) crossing to Hankinson's ferry over the Big Black was occupied by the retreating foe to delay our progress. McPherson, however, reached Hankinson's ferry before night, seized the ferry boat, and sent a detachment of his command across and several miles north on the road to Vicksburg. When ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... Questions of that kind did not seem to bother him. His was a nature that escaped the necessity of self-analysis. But I was different, and our conversation had aroused a train of odd thought. What, after all, was it that kept my nose to the grindstone? Why had I slaved incessantly all my life, reading when I might have slept, examining patients when I might have been strolling through meadows, hurrying through meals when I might have eaten at leisure? What was the cause behind all ...
— The Blue Germ • Martin Swayne
... ever was. Only needs a horse round somewhere to be complete," answered Ben, as the long well-sweep came up with a dripping bucket at one end, an old grindstone at the other. ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... several ways. Either you join forces, for instance, and find a grindstone—or make one of the other man's axe. But the last way is too slow, and, as I said, takes too much brain-work—besides, it doesn't pay. It might satisfy your vanity or pride, but I've got none. I had once, when I was younger, but it—well, it nearly ...
— On the Track • Henry Lawson
... it doan't work, an' dat's how I've been swindled, Mistah Swift. Yo' see, I done traded mah ole grindstone off for dis yeah lawn-moah, an' I ...
— Tom Swift and his Motor-cycle • Victor Appleton
... me," said the other. "You only want a grindstone, the rest will come of itself. Here is one that is only a little the worse for wear. I would not ask more than the value of your goose for it. Will you ...
— Folk-lore and Legends: German • Anonymous
... Niksich and taken as my part of the booty, but had not noticed that it had never been sharpened, so that it was useless for cutting. One of the men at the convent took it, and with a common whetstone (for there was nothing in the nature of a grindstone in the place) brought it to razor edge,—a job which a carpenter alone can appreciate; and, when I tried to give him something for it, he put his hands behind him and then ran out of sight. A little fellow, not over four years old, stumbled upstairs ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... world would be a much more agreeable place. If people would only learn what they can and what they can’t do, and leave the latter feats alone, a vast amount of unnecessary annoyance would be avoided and the tiresome old grindstone turn to a more ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... was rather too large for my purpose, so I cut it in two, using the one half as a bundle-cover. The other half would make a sort of cape or cloak, I thought, and to that end I folded it and slung it over my shoulder. I gave my knife a few turns upon the grindstone, pocketed some twine from one of the lockers, lashed my bundle in its tarpaulin as tightly as I could, and then went aft to the provision lockers to get some stores for the road. I took out a few ship's biscuits, a large hunk of ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... work. But he got tired of the old knife—it was not tool enough, and had to fashion on the grindstone a screw-driver to a special implement. With ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... everything to a grindstone,' said Steerforth, and sharpens it, as she has sharpened her own face and figure these years past. She has worn herself away by constant sharpening. ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... part sent word to Smith to visit him, to send him men to build a house, give him a grindstone, fifty swords, some big guns, a cock and a hen, much copper and beads, in return for which he would load his ship with corn. Without any confidence in the crafty savage, Smith humored him by sending several workmen, including four Dutchmen, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... was hot, and Dorothy was tired. But where in that wide and not over-clean place should she find anything fitter than a grindstone to sit upon? Never yet, through all her acquaintance with the workshop, had she once seated herself in it. Looking about, however, she soon espied, almost hidden in the corner of a recess behind the furnace, what seemed ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... her head. "It's a good thing that I don't. If I did, Jimmie would never write. He says that I keep his nose to the grindstone. It isn't that, but I love him too much to let him squander his talent. If he had no talent, I should love him without it. But, having it, I must ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... old place, and the first thing I did was to take out the sash. I'd noticed Jack yarning with 'Possum before he started work. While I was at work at the window he called me round to the other end of the hut to help him lift a grindstone out of the way; and when we'd done it, he took the tips of my ear between his fingers and thumb and stretched it and whispered ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... her as a factor in their mutual affairs. "I have to protest against this mortgage, John. We ought to keep a small home free at least, and instead of putting more on this eighty we ought to sell enough of the stuff to pay off on this part. Every farmer in this country has his nose on the interest grindstone, and my life has been spoiled with it ever since I can remember. Please, dear, let's not put a ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... world, ennui trying to live, and an Englishman who said: "I do this or that, therefore I amuse myself. I have spent so many pieces of gold, therefore I experience so much pleasure." And they wear out their life on that grindstone. ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... she drove her teeth deep into Hall's hand and fought with a feline fury that is always terrifying. Jim was gazing in big-eyed silence, when Hall, enraged, thrust the cat into the leg of a boot and growled, "I'll fix yer biting," and held her teeth to the grindstone till the body ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... which followed was, for various reasons, a memorable one, though some of the guests appeared distinctly puzzled by the sequence of viands and liquors. Still, even those who, appreciating the change from leathery venison and grindstone bread, had eaten too much at the first course, struggled manfully with the succeeding, and good fellowship reigned until the cloth was removed, and the ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... candidate to a borough that has a sneaking liking for the kind of person, more honour to it. I'm a political veteran, sir; I speak from experience. We must employ our weapons, every one of them, and all off the grindstone.' ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... dried up. So learning devastates the scholar, is another plague of wealth, and our goodness turns out to be a hasty mistake. Is order disorder, then? Are we fools of fate? Is there only power enough to prop up this rickety old system, to keep it running and hold our noses to the grindstone? No man believes it: the madness of Time ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... Hold a nail against a grindstone while you turn the stone. Notice both the wear and heat. Let the nail rest lightly on the stone part of the time and press hard part of the time. Which way does the nail get hotter? Which way does it wear off more quickly? Run it over ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... is none of the most fruitful; nor is it exactly an agreeable one. By dint of turning over uncommonly jagged stones, our fingertips get hurt, lose their skin and become as smooth as though we had held them on a grindstone. After a whole afternoon of this work, our back will be aching, our fingers will be itching and smarting and we shall possess a dozen Osmia-nests and perhaps two or three Resin-bees' nests. Let us ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... meet. The Senator is a tall, lank, ungainly looking man; thin lipped, with mean, cunning eyes, strained ever for the main chance. A few tufts of reddish hair are flattened on either side of his cranium, and his nose and chin were sharpened on the grindstone of necessity and early hardship into twin beaks. Verily a vulture, battening now on the Trusts, and feared and hated by other birds of smaller body and weaker wing. With him, Selfishness is indeed the main-spring of Ambition! His features are well-known to the ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... discovered that all the knives in the kitchen were blunt and went and fetched some kind of private grindstone and sharpened them, and then told me that the apple-trees ought to be grease-banded, which I thought was a thing one only did to engines. And, when he had brought a hammer and some nails and put together a large bookcase which had collapsed as soon as The ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 22, 1920 • Various
... Ellen, "when I see you, and the way you act! You have chance after chance, but you seem to think that life requires of you a steady job of holding your nose to the grindstone. It was rather stubby to begin with, go on and grind it clear off ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... gone. Port, starboard, and masthead lights; teak gratings; sliding sashes of the deckhouse; the captain's chest of drawers, with charts and chart-table; photographs, brackets, and looking-glasses; cabin doors; rubber cuddy mats; hatch-irons; half the funnel-stays; cork fenders; carpenter's grindstone and tool-chest; holystones, swabs, squeegees; all cabin and pantry lamps; galley-fittings en bloc; flags and flag-locker; clocks, chronometers; the forward compass and the ship's bell and belfry, were ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... you could find money in your pocket whenever you put your hand into it, your fortune would be made." "Very true: but how is that to be managed?" "You must turn grinder like me," said the other: "you only want a grindstone; the rest will come of itself. Here is one that is a little the worse for wear: I would not ask more than the value of your goose for it;—will you buy?" "How can you ask such a question?" replied Hans; "I should be the happiest man in the world if I could have money whenever ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... labourers of their wages. They hoped that by yielding, before they were driven quite to the last extremity, by the tide of public sentiment in England, they should escape from all philanthropic interference and surveillance, and be able to bring the faces of their unyoked peasantry to the grindstone of ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... to ron in at the bench hole. xanti. Nay mary I warrant the. I gat me a thre foted stole in hand, & he had but ones layd his littell finger on me, he shulde not haue founde me lame. I woulde haue holden his nose to the grindstone Eulalia. A newe found shelde, ye wanted but youre dystaffe to haue made you a speare. xantip. And he shoulde not greatlye a laughed at his parte. Eulali. Ah my frynde. xantyppa. that way is neither ...
— A Merry Dialogue Declaringe the Properties of Shrowde Shrews and Honest Wives • Desiderius Erasmus
... died in Manchester of lockjaw, caused by his hand being crushed between wheels. June 16th, a youth in Saddleworth seized by a wheel and carried away with it; died, utterly mangled. June 29th, a young man at Green Acres Moor, near Manchester, at work in a machine shop, fell under the grindstone, which broke two of his ribs and lacerated him terribly. July 24th, a girl in Oldham died, carried around fifty times by a strap; no bone unbroken. July 27th, a girl in Manchester seized by the ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... Waters. Others the best sound Cork without flaws or holes, bored through with a hot Iron, and a Quill of a fit proportion put into it; then pared into a pyramidal Form, or in the fashion of a small Peare, to what bigness you please, and ground smooth with a Grindstone or Pumice; this is ...
— The School of Recreation (1684 edition) • Robert Howlett
... martinet for training, hereafter," Purcell declared earnestly. "I'm going to be a worse stickler than old coach himself. And I'm going to exercise my right as a senior to watch the other fellows and hold their noses to the training grindstone." ...
— The High School Left End - Dick & Co. Grilling on the Football Gridiron • H. Irving Hancock
... cloud of fire-mist is simply a very big machine, and no machine can generate power to work itself. If La Place could have somehow or other got power for the motion of rotation outside of his cloud, he might have made it revolve, and scatter off great lumps of the lightest outside stuffs, as your grindstone scatters off drops of water when you turn it rapidly; but, having no such power, his theory is a plan to make the grindstone turn itself. It is, therefore, precisely of the same value as any one of the hundred of ingenious schemes for creating power by ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... all the way home with the idea of being at liberty to spend the next day, except the few hours' duty at chapel, at the turning-bench; but recollecting that the tools wanted sharpening, they ran with them and a lantern to their landlord's grindstone in a public yard, where, very naturally, they did not wish to be seen on a Sunday morning. But William was soon brought back by his brother, almost swooning with the loss of one ...
— The Story of the Herschels • Anonymous
... things very useful to me; as first, in the carpenters stores I found two or three bags full of nails and spikes, a great screw- jack, a dozen or two of hatchets, and, above all, that most useful thing called a grindstone. All these I secured, together with several things belonging to the gunner, particularly two or three iron crows, and two barrels of musket bullets, seven muskets, another fowling-piece, with some small quantity of powder more; a large bagful of small shot, and a great roll of ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... were mixed with those of animals, and that both showed traces of having been burnt. These bones date from the Neolithic period, and with them were picked up various objects of remarkable workmanship, including fragments of pottery, half a grindstone for crushing grain, and ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... had taken a hearty dinner, the cabin tables and chairs, all their clothes, some boxes of candles, two bags of coffee, two of rice, two more of biscuits, several pieces of beef and pork and bags of flour, some more water, the grindstone, and Mrs Seagrave's medicine-chest were landed. When Ready came off again, he said, "Our poor boat is getting very leaky, and will not take much more on shore without being repaired; and Juno has not been able to get half the things up—they are too heavy for one person. I think we ...
— Masterman Ready - The Wreck of the "Pacific" • Captain Frederick Marryat
... 2: Pick out the adjectives in the following: "When I was a little boy, I remember that one cold winter's morning I was accosted by a smiling man with an ax on his shoulder. 'My pretty boy,' said he, 'has your father a grindstone?' 'Yes, sir,' said I. 'You are a fine little fellow,' said he. 'Will you let me grind ...
— Latin for Beginners • Benjamin Leonard D'Ooge
... those trees which bear cones, such as the spruce, fir, balsam, and pine are used. There are two methods of manufacturing wood pulp; the mechanical, by grinding up the wood, and the chemical, by treating it chemically. By the mechanical method the wood is pressed against a large grindstone which revolves at a high speed. As fast as the wood is ground off, it is washed away by a current of water, and strained through a shaking sieve and a revolving screen which drives out part of the water by centrifugal force. In a great vat of pulp a drum covered with wire cloth revolves, and ...
— Makers of Many Things • Eva March Tappan
... what kind the fire might be Peter was not quite sure. The two young creatures faced each other. There was laughter in each face, but something else; something strenuous, tragic even; as though "Life at its grindstone set" had been at work on the radiant pair, evoking the Meredithian series of intellect from the senses,—"brain from blood"; with "spirit," or ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... worthless writing. Robert Frost has approached a satisfying conception. "The land is always in my bones," he said—the land of rock fences. But, "I am not a regionalist. I am a realmist. I write about realms of democracy and realms of the spirit." Those realms include The Woodpile, The Grindstone, Blueberries, Birches, and many other features of the ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie
... "get the grindstone ready. And Green, get the cutlasses up on deck and give them a thorough good sharpening. We may want them by ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... sorry for the dog. Poor fellow! He couldn't go fishing. He had to stay home always. I felt sorry for the house and the dooryard and the cows and the grindstone and Aunt Deel. The glow of the candles and the odor of ham and eggs drew me into the house. Wistfully I watched the great man as he ate his supper. I was always hungry those days. Mr. Wright asked me to have an egg, but I shook my head and said "No, ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... of the wood, was a cluster of low red farm buildings. The two hastened forward. Flush with the wood was the apple orchard, where blossom was falling on the grindstone. The pond was deep under a hedge and overhanging oak trees. Some cows stood in the shade. The farm and buildings, three sides of a quadrangle, embraced the sunshine towards the wood. ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... And this is all the more manifest when we consider the advantages which we obtain from this same water for the cleaning of our household utensils, of our clothing, and of other matters.... When one goes into a grinding-mill one sees that the grindstone must always be kept wet and then one will get a still greater idea ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... was a genius he most went off his head with pride. Why that man—the selfishest, laziest creature by nature—worked himself to skin and bone so that she should have the best lessons and everything she needed. We both held our noses to the grindstone just as tight as ever we could, and Mercedes was brought up pretty ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... double-ender of a State political jobbery was at fault, because it had no headquarters. It could not get together a ring; it could not raise a corps of lobbyists. Such few axe-grinders as there were had to dodge back and forth between the Fastburg grindstone and the Slowburg grindstone, without ever fairly getting their tools sharpened. Legislature here and legislature there; it was like guessing at a pea between two thimbles; you could hardly ever put your finger on the right one. Then what one capital favored the other disfavored; and between ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... looked for his name in the book. It was written in a fair, clerkly hand. He lived at Streatham. Suddenly I hated him. The dogged fool, to keep his nose on the grindstone like that. What was all his courage but the very tip-top of cowardice? What a vile nature—almost Sadish, proud, like the infamous Red Indians, of being ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... the tale of the Council the German Kaiser held— The day that they razored the Grindstone, the day that the Cat was belled, The day of the Figs from Thistles, the day of the Twisted Sands, The day that the laugh of a maiden made light of the ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... Every time I showed up on the pike that human accident that breathes like a man and talks like a rabbit chased me eight miles there and back. The first time I tried to approach the infernal house I fell over a grindstone and signed checks in the gravel with my nose. Hereafter, when you want a burglar, pick somebody your own size. I'm going to hunt a hospital and get ...
— Back to the Woods • Hugh McHugh
... that she could best farther the girl's interests by tormenting her. It was not meditated revenge, but that revenge which springs up without any meditation, and is often therefore the most bitter. "I must bring her nose to the grindstone," was the manner in which she would have probably expressed her thoughts to herself. Consequently Florence's nose was brought to the grindstone, and the operation made her miserable. She would not, however, complain when she had discovered what her mother was doing. She asked such ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... varied form too. If the workman is thinking about his edges, he cannot be thinking of his design; if of his design, he cannot think of his edges. Choose whether you will pay for the lovely form or the perfect finish, and choose at the same moment whether you will make the worker a man or a grindstone. ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... mind to the reading of a book, or to the study of any subject, as you take an axe to the grindstone; not for what you get from the stone, but for the sharpening of the axe. While it is true that the facts learned from books are worth more than the dust from the stone, even in much greater ratio is the mind more valuable than the axe. Bacon says: ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... looked him up and made sure of that; title's good as wheat. God knows that never would 'a' got me, but the madam was set on it, and the girl too, and I had to give in. It seemed to be a question of him or some actor. The madam said I'd had my way about Hank, puttin' his poor stubby nose to the grindstone out there in Chicago, and makin' a plain insignificant business man out of him, and I'd ought to let her have her way with the girl, being that I couldn't expect her to go to work too. So Mil will work the society end. I says to ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... Hammer Bit brace Assortment, drills and bits, 1/2 in. and less. Drawshave Screwdriver Small grindstone or corundum wheel Chisels, two or three sizes 1 wood rasp 1 cabinet rasp 1 chopping block, made of a section of ...
— Home Taxidermy for Pleasure and Profit • Albert B. Farnham
... is churning, The grindstone's turning, John is sawing, Charles hurrahing, Old Dobson's preaching, The peacock's screeching; Who can ...
— Little Songs • Eliza Lee Follen
... and twenty thousand tons of water each minute' nearly ceased to flow, and dwindled away into the appearance of a mere milldam. The rapids above the falls disappeared, leaving scarcely enough on the American side to turn a grindstone. Ladies and gentlemen rode in carriages one-third of the way across the river towards the Canada shore, over solid rock as smooth as a kitchen floor. The Iris says: 'Table Rock, with some two hundred yards more, was left ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... vibratory movements are opposed by the same property. A grindstone, a tuning-fork, and an atom of hydrogen require, to move them in their appropriate ways, an amount of energy proportionate to their mass or inertia, which energy is again transformed through friction into heat ...
— The Machinery of the Universe - Mechanical Conceptions of Physical Phenomena • Amos Emerson Dolbear
... and get a good cigar, Or even pot a milky coconut: And, all this while, life's had the upper hand: I slipt, the day I came; and lost my grip: Life got me by the scruff of the neck, and held My proud nose to the grindstone. My turn, now— I'll be upsides with life, and teach it manners, Before death gets the stranglehold: I'll have The last laugh, though it choke me. And what's death, To set us twittering? I'll be no frightened squirrel: Scarting and scolding never yet scared death: When he's a mind to crack me like ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... way was as familiar to Rebecca as to uncle Jerry; every watering-trough, grindstone, red barn, weather-vane, duck-pond, and sandy brook. And all the time she was looking backward to the day, seemingly so long ago, when she sat on the box seat for the first time, her legs dangling in the air, too short to reach the footboard. ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... large-sized pike-float for live bait, and this civilized sign had been only a few minutes in the wild waters of the Atbara, when, bob! and away it went! I had a very large reel, with nearly three hundred yards of line that had been specially made for monsters; down went the top of my rod, as though a grindstone was suspended on it, and, as I recovered its position, away went the line, and the reel revolved, not with the sudden dash of a spirited fish, but with the steady determined pull of a trotting horse. What on earth have I got hold of? In a few ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... much," said Sir George Staunton, "you will have the boat on the Grindstone—bring that white rock in a ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... of mine does its duty, we'll thrash the Mounseers, and gain the King his own again," exclaimed Dick, as he applied his weapon to the grindstone, feeling that he was a host in himself; and so he was, provided no treacherous bullet found its way through his sturdy frame, when, alas, Dick's strength and courage ...
— Charley Laurel - A Story of Adventure by Sea and Land • W. H. G. Kingston
... am in earnest. You can't speak—you can't move. Your nose is held close to the grindstone all the time. He watches you every moment. If you drink a drop he says you are tipsy and makes no ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... I had found the case in the library, and had restored it to him five minutes before, his ejaculation was not in the best of taste. His lordship, however, must whet his point upon the grindstone of insult. ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... repent of it afore seven Years came to an End, so as Doctor Prescot should never cure him. These Words were heard by others besides Abbot himself; who also heard her say, She would hold his Nose as close to the Grindstone as ever it was held since his Name was Abbot. Presently after this, he was taken with a Swelling in his Foot, and then with a Pain in his Side, and exceedingly tormented. It bred into a Sore, which was launced by Doctor Prescot, and several Gallons of ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... let my nose be kept to the grindstone, as yours is, for any one living. I've too much spirit, for my part to be made a fool of as some people are; and all for the sake of being called a vastly good daughter, or a vastly good ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... broad enough for a Turk, with pockets like large bags hanging down inside of them, then the boy rebels and refuses to go anywhere. If he goes he takes his road through Stone's Woods, and comes home the back way by the wagon-house. The boy has grit, real grindstone grit: therefore he keeps this up, and sooner or later he has it out with the old farmer about his clothes. "Well, well, don't rare and pitch like a flax-break: we'll see about it," says the old gentleman. The old farmer takes the boy to town and buys him a sleek, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... easy until sun-up. The Grindstone Buttes lay about a mile ahead of us. Looking back, we saw the Injuns coming over a rise of ...
— Red Saunders • Henry Wallace Phillips
... of the room which was well lighted was one end near the solitary window. Here, upon a table with a spliced leg, stood a little grindstone. ...
— The Magic Egg and Other Stories • Frank Stockton
... old woman to a marriage between Junius and Miss March; and saw, as plainly as she saw the lamp on the table, that Roberta had been brought here on purpose to be sacrificed to Mr Croft. Everything had been made ready, the altar cleared, and, as well as the old lady's grindstone would act, the knife sharpened. "But," said Miss Annie to herself, "she needn't suppose that I am going to sit quiet and see all this going on, with Junius away off there in Washington, knowing ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... so!" cried Mr. Blake. "Tom Swift, there's something wrong here! Let you and me talk this over. I begin to see how I may be able to take a peep through the hole in the grindstone," a colloquial expression which was as well understood by Tom as were some ...
— Tom Swift among the Fire Fighters - or, Battling with Flames from the Air • Victor Appleton
... merely because it was large and solid and difficult to storm, and therefore symbolic of the mighty monarchical machinery of which it had been but the shed. The English rioters laboriously broke in pieces a parish grindstone, merely because it was large and solid and difficult to break, and therefore symbolic of the mighty oligarchical machinery which perpetually ground the faces of the poor. They also put the oppressive agent of ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... few minutes we were descending a lane so narrow that the gipsy van only cleared the walls of the houses on either side by three or four inches. This lane had been paved centuries ago with stones of all sizes, from a moderate grindstone to that of a football. When people had wished to build a new house, they had taken up a few stones to make a foundation; the street was a series of pitfalls filled with mud and filth, including miniature ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... the post-office, Mr. Van Brunt?" she asked one morning, as she stood watching the sharpening of an axe upon the grindstone. The axe was in that gentleman's hand, and its edge carefully laid to the whirling stone, which one of ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... surface nearly a thousand miles per hour. Now the water on its surface, covering about three-fourths of it, and being more mobile than the solid earth, is, by centrifugal force, made to roll around the earth, the same as the water is made to move around the grindstone when in motion, a thing familiar to every body that uses that instrument. In the Southern Ocean this motion of the water is so well known to mariners who double Cape Horn in sailing from San Francisco to New York, that they now run ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... Peter? One can't suppose that he's rich enough to fling all his salary to an understudy while he gads. Yet I've seen him going to his room with a sheaf of papers which would keep the nose of a common secretary at the grindstone for six or seven hours, whereas P. S. is free to do as he pleases in less ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... the gutter and spunging for rum? Now, here in this blasted chest is the gold to make men of us for life: gold, ay, gobs of it; and writin's too - things that if I had the proof of 'em I'd hold Jack Gaunt to the grindstone till his face was flat. I'd have done it single-handed; but I'm blind, worse luck: I'm all in the damned dark here, poking with a stick - Lord, burn up with lime the eyes that saw it! That's why I raked up you. Come, out with your iron, ...
— The Plays of W. E. Henley and R. L. Stevenson
... his hand to"—Scrooge in the flesh was, through the very manner of the utterance of his name, brought vividly and upon the instant before the observant listener. "Oh! but he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, was Scrooge!" That we knew instinctively, without there being any need whatever for our hearing one syllable of the description of him, admirably given in the book, but suppressed in the Reading, judiciously suppressed ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... flattened cylinder, or perhaps that which the earth would assume if, in consequence of more rapid rotation, the bulging out at its equator and the flattening at its poles were carried to an extreme limit. This form has been correctly though satirically compared to that of a grindstone. It rests to a certain extent, but not entirely, on the idea that the stars are scattered through space with equal thickness in every direction, and that the appearance of the Milky Way is due to the fact that we, situated ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... Apollo,' or, 'The Red-cross Knight'—very well received; recitative and aria, from Lucia di Lammermoor—very lachrymose; violin solo, by Signor Rosinini, who throws the audience into a paroxysm of delight by imitating a saw and a grindstone; 'The Bay of Biscay,' by the 'veteran' Braham, being positively his last appearance (the 'veteran' is announced for four concerts in the ensuing week!); ballad, again, by the native tenor, 'When Vows are torn by slumbering Hearts'—more great applause; the page's song from the Huguenots, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various
... thought it very likely that Virginia might have written to me again. I had remained for an hour on the beach, when I recollected that my knife required to be sharpened, and I walked round the cottage to the back yard, where there was a small grindstone. I had not put my knife to it when I heard Bramble come in and say ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... "Oh, that's the way to make him a great man sometime. I does it to all the boy babies. There's luck in it." In those days there were great hopes, and prophecies had not ceased. Many a sweet sleep did I have under the elm tree's shade later on; and many a tiresome hour turning the grindstone for the long bladed sythes. In the trunk of the tree were stuck many worn out blades, their points imbedded by the tree's growth from year to year. Thus they became tallies marking the past seasons of haying. Under the tree ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... made by Thomas Wright, an instrument maker in London, in a book published in 1750. He supposed the stars of our sidereal system to be distributed in a vast stratum of inconsiderable thickness compared with its length and breadth. If we had a big grindstone made of glass, in which had become uniformly imbedded a vast quantity of grains of sand or similar minute particles, and if we were able to place our eye somewhere near the centre of this grindstone, it is easy to see that we should ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... off on an emery wheel or grindstone to a smooth edge parallel with the back edge. For the handle, take two pieces of hard wood, dressing one surface of each piece, and cut a groove as wide and thick as the saw blade. Place the blade in the groove and glue the two dressed sides of the wood together. After the glue has dried, the blade ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... Tom, wagging her head in sorrowful confession, "and that's just what I see no chance of getting again for a precious long time to come. I haven't much time to grieve, however, for my poor little nose is fairly worn away, it's kept so near to the grindstone." ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... spring rain set in, and Mr. Stanley, who was a forehanded worker, found a job for all of us in the barn. Ben, the younger son, and I sharpened mower-blades and a scythe or so, Ben turning the grindstone and I holding the blades and telling him stories into the bargain. Mr. Stanley and his stout older son overhauled the work-harness and tinkered the corn-planter. The doors at both ends of the barn stood wide open, and through one of them, framed like a picture, we could see the ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... two-day old, red and white calf cuddled down in a straw bed in the corner; and the little field mice darting over the barn floor; and the swallows twittering overhead among the beams and rafters; and the old grindstone that the children liked to turn; and the scythe and pitchfork that Grandpa charged them "not even to look at;" and the yellow ears of corn peeping out of their dry husks, in a pile in the corner, and the old ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... the Catwhisker was several miles beyond Grindstone Island and was winding its way through a labyrinthine group to the north of Grandview. The scenery here was so enchanting that Cub and his father speedily agreed that the first convenient, unclaimed natural harbor ...
— The Radio Boys in the Thousand Islands • J. W. Duffield
... but the mirror is not made yet. It must be of about two inches diameter, and must be founded in moulds of fine sand at the moment when a conjunction of Jupiter and Venus occurs. The mirror must be smoothed with a grindstone and polished with tripoly and a piece of lime-wood; but all the operations must be conducted only when the ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... look at the old cider mill, look at the junk (all the time puttin' in the awfulest profanity). Here he's over at Springfield, and me runnin' the paper and tryin' to print a paper on a grindstone like this. I'm goin' to quit—I've had enough ...
— Mitch Miller • Edgar Lee Masters
... star-shaped cut is formed from a separate piece of steel, so attached to the handle as to make a close joint with the blade. The latter is beveled from the outside all round, so that by removing the part making the star-shaped cut, the edge may be ground on a grindstone. It is important that the angles in the blade be made perfect, and that its outline represents an exact half hexagon. To use the tool, place the tarred paper on the end of a section of a log or piece of timber and first cut the lower edge into notches, as indicated ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... passed among the Grindstone Buttes—several small hills. A prairie fire was burning among them, and lit up the road for us. We came to Shaw's at last, and went into camp. We visited the house before we went to bed, and found that Shaw was grizzly enough ...
— The Voyage of the Rattletrap • Hayden Carruth
... in winter he shovels paths; in summer he turns the grindstone. He knows where there are lots of wintergreens and sweet flags, but instead of going for them, he is to stay indoors and pare apples, and stone raisins, and pound something in a mortar. And yet, with his ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... house beyond. And stowed away in odd corners was all kinds of junk that might be more or less useful to have: a couple of lawn-mowers, an old sleigh hoisted up on the rafters of the carriage house, a weird old buggy, a plow, a grindstone, a collection of old chairs and sofas that had seen better days, a birch-bark canoe—things ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... him the first thruppinny-bit you meet floatin' down the river on a grindstone, and you'll be buyin' every hair in his tail," said the old man. "But come along and don't be delayin' thim. They're goin' after fairin's for their sweethearts, the way you'd be yourself if you worn't too great a naygur. Or, maybe, ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane |
