"Groove" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... existing conditions. Consequently, if the window is cleaned and left wet, it dries in drops, and these drops contain dirt in solution which remain as spots. But water containing a suitable solvent could quite simply be made to run down a window for a few minutes from pinholes in a pipe above into a groove below, and this could be followed by pure rain water for an equal time, and in this way the whole window cleaning in the house could, I imagine, be reduced to the business of ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... he rode, Mount Dunstan knew that he liked to hear these things. There was the suggestion of new life and new thought in them, and such suggestion was good for any man—or woman, either—who had fallen into living in a dull, narrow groove. ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... queried Burmistone. "That's true. But I am afraid she wouldn't enjoy it—if you are supposing the man to be an Englishman, brought up in the regulation groove." ...
— A Fair Barbarian • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... than that general feeling, there of course remained the sadness which arose from the special features of his own case. However remote a desired issue may be, the mere fact of having entered the groove which leads to it, cheers to some extent with a sense of accomplishment. Had Mr. Swancourt consented to an engagement of no less length than ten years, Stephen would have been comparatively cheerful in waiting; they would have felt that they were somewhere on the road ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... and crept quickly and noiselessly back to bed. When she was in her room, and the door closed, and all safe, she breathed freely, and a great weight fell off her. She nestled down in bed, in the groove his body had made, in the warmth he had left. And excited, worn-out, yet still satisfied, she fell soon into a ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... Which doth demand dexterity to soothe. Thus, when I wisdom spouted at the club, A man most pestulent did query put Anent the spreading of our civic rule O'er Moros, if it proved to be the case That they demur and, "knowing what they want," Prefer to rule themselves in custom's groove. I, loyal to the ethics of our craft Tried to becloud the query, and declared That Moros loved the Filipinos well. But this persistent boor did pin me down Until imprudently I answered, "No!" And this unwisdom ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... with surprise. He sees us work and work and work; he sees us grow old quickly, and our minds get weary; he sees our sympathies grow very narrow, our ideas bent into one groove, our whole souls destroyed for a little money, a little fame, a little promotion, till we go home, and do not know what to do with ourselves, because we have no work and no sympathy with anything; and at last we die, and take down with ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... that time may be expressed by the mere statement of its length. Yet there is time in his book, it is very certain—time that lags and loiters till the girl has lost her youth and has dropped into the dull groove from which she will evidently never again be dislodged. Balzac can treat the story as concisely as he will, he can record Eugenie's simple experience from without, and yet make the fading of her ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... of AEsculapius) eating a pineapple, but by tablets, pills, jars, and vials containing dried-up liquids, and a bronze medicine chest divided into compartments which must have contained drugs. A groove for the spatula had been ingeniously constructed in this ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier
... presidency, becoming for another twelve years chairman of the board of directors, it was only to find new outlets for his energy in building pulp and paper mills in Quebec and railways in Cuba; for though, unlike many millionaires, he had not narrowed into his own business groove, and could paint a picture as well as buy one, the call to action ...
— The Railway Builders - A Chronicle of Overland Highways • Oscar D. Skelton
... knew how to prevent their looking on me as their governess," continued Magdalen; "but I must have got into the groove, and I suppose I do not always remember how much must be tolerated if love has to be won; and Paula ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... in an awed voice. "He's a bit of a nut, that lad, what! He reminds me of the troops of Midian in the hymn. The chappies who prowled and prowled around. I'll bet he's worn a groove in the carpet. Like a jolly old tiger at the Zoo at feeding time. Wouldn't be surprised at any moment to look down and find him biting a piece out ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... say: "Enough that thou hast lifted me on high;" but not: "And from the ignoble crowd hast severed me;" unless it means his having come out from the Platonic groove on account of the stupid and low condition of the crowd; for those that find profit in this contemplation ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... to what was, or what he believed to be, his own door, he knocked, and knocked, but the old woman within either couldn't or wouldn't hear him, so he scrambled over a wall, and, having taken his repose in a furrow, was able to testify to the extreme unpleasantness of such a couch. The predial groove might indeed nourish kindly the infant seeds and shoots of the peculiar vegetable to which it was appropriated, but was not a comfortable place of repose ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... their sentiments move in the narrowest groove— be thankful you are not like them! Mere murder's an act which they seldom approve, and are even inclined to condemn: When the patriot blows up his friends or his foes, those prejudiced Saxons among, It is reckoned a flaw in ...
— Lyra Frivola • A. D. Godley
... of flooring which is generally made of hardwood, such as maple, oak, or jarrah. It is used in positions such as ballroom and skating rink floors, etc., the tongue and groove being worked in such a manner that the joint covers the nails as shown. Each nail is driven into its position at one edge of the board, the groove holding the next board and hiding the ...
— Woodwork Joints - How they are Set Out, How Made and Where Used. • William Fairham
... second cavities (a and b) are placed parallel (or on a level) with each other; and the oesophagus (e) opens, almost equally, into them both. On each side of the termination of the oesophagus there is a muscular ridge projecting, so that the two together form a sort of groove or channel, which opens almost equally into the second and third cavities (b ...
— Delineations of the Ox Tribe • George Vasey
... only been half-asleep. His intention of becoming an architect had never left him. But, through weakness before his father, through a cowardly desire to avoid disturbance and postpone a crisis, he had let the weeks slide by. Now he was in a groove, in a canyon. He had to get out, and the ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... interposes, and constant motion prevents any definite indication by the lines, then have a groove on the upper side, five feet long, one digit wide, and a digit and a half deep, and pour water into it. If the water comes up uniformly to the rims of the groove, it will be known that the instrument is level. When the level is thus found by means of the chorobates, ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... stress on Royalist or Bonapartist, or even a military candidate. The "People's Candidate" is always their cry—one of themselves who understands them and will give them all they want. They are disappointed always. The ministers and deputies change, but their lives don't, and run on in the same groove; but they are just as sanguine each time there is an election, convinced that, at last, the promised days of high pay ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... the things on, or, rather, get on them, you learn that, however pleasant they may grow to be as servants, they are certainly pretty bad masters; and you will find that the groove which is run in the bottom of the skies to prevent their spreading is of very little assistance, for they seem to have a will of their own, and also a bitter grudge against each other: they step ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... the man, pointing to a long narrow groove in the sand, just such as might have been made by the keel of some large boat, whilst a closer inspection showed that the sand and shingle had been trampled by ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn
... likely to help us, and thus we vary our course, on the next occasion we remember this idea by reason of its novelty, but if we try to repeat it, we often find the residuum of our old memories pulling us so strongly into our old groove, that we have the greatest difficulty in repeating our performance in the new manner; there is a clashing of memories, a conflict, which if the idea is very new, and involves, so to speak, too sudden a cross—too wide a departure from our ordinary course—will ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... Klopstock's works, that he chose such a subject. It had been decided that the church was to be his career, but he soon abandoned the idea, and transferred his affections to medicine, which he studied assiduously, without neglecting the groove to which his genius was leading him by slow but sure steps. Gerstenberg's great tragedy, "Ugolino," fell by chance into his hands, and gave him a new impetus; "Goetz von Berlichingen" fascinated him; and then came a revelation from ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... they lie on the coffer! There is a curiously shaped Italian dagger, of the kind which in a groove has poison that makes its wound mortal. On the old mantel-piece, over the fireplace, there is a vial in which are kept certain poisons. It would seem as if some one had meditated suicide; or else ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... swayed Maupassant's prose writings was the conviction that in life there could be no phase so noble or so mean, so honorable or so contemptible, so lofty or so low as to be unworthy of chronicling,—no groove of human virtue or fault, success or failure, wisdom or folly that did not possess its own peculiar psychological aspect and therefore ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... settled himself in his arm-chair, with the air of a man who refused to move—out of his proper groove. ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... bottom, and with a hole, large enough for the head, in the top. Ail the walls were double and were made of windproof material, with about an inch between for the air to circulate. This box stood on a platform, which was raised a couple of feet above the snow surface. The box fitted into a groove, and was thus absolutely tight. In the platform immediately under the bath a rectangular opening was cut, lined round with rubber packing, and into this opening a tin box fitted accurately. Under the tin box stood two Primus lamps, and now everyone will be able to understand why Hassel felt ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... wrapped several times round the wrist. We also suspected that they use slings on some occasions; for we got some pieces of the haematites, or blood-stone, artificially made of an oval shape, divided longitudinally, with a narrow groove in the middle of the convex part. To this the person, who had one of them, applied a cord of no great thickness, but would not part with it, though he had no objection to part with the stone, which must prove fatal, when thrown with any force, as it weighed a pound. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... a thin grass held its own right up to the crest of the cliff. Overhead, forty or fifty feet of rock bulged into the great masses characteristic of chalk, but at the end of the ledge a gully, a precipitous groove of discoloured rock, slashed the face of the cliff, and gave a footing to a scrubby growth, by which Eudena and Ugh-lomi went ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... almost idle to speculate. In the same neighbourhood is a cavern situated high up in the face of a perpendicular rock. It is inaccessible by ordinary means; but a beam fixed at the entrance, and worn into a deep groove by a rope, shows that it was used as a refuge. A tradition says that ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... with perspiration. As well I might have pulled at the pillars of St. Paul's. I tried my small sword as a lever, but it snapped in my hand. Again I examined the bars. There was no way but to pick them from their sockets by making a groove in the masonry. With the point of my sword I chipped industriously at the cement. At the end of ten minutes I had made perceptible progress. Yet it took me another hour of labour to accomplish my task. I undid the blind fastenings, clambered out, and lowered myself foot by foot to the ground ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... plan, and a beaver, he avers, does the same. But the difference is obvious. Beavers, under the same conditions, build the same kind of dams and lodges; and all beavers as a rule do the same. Instinct is uniform in its workings; it runs in a groove. Reason varies endlessly and makes endless mistakes. Men build various kinds of dams and in various kinds of places, with various kinds of material and for various kinds of uses. They exercise individual judgment, they invent ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... roots of the blades, are inserted in dovetailed grooves in the cylinder and rotor, where they are firmly held in place by keypieces, as may be seen at C in Fig. 27. Each keypiece, when driven in place, is upset into an undercut groove, indicated by D in Fig. 27, thereby positively locking the whole structure together. Each separate blade is firmly secured by the dovetail shape of the root, which is held between the corresponding dovetailed slot in ...
— Steam Turbines - A Book of Instruction for the Adjustment and Operation of - the Principal Types of this Class of Prime Movers • Hubert E. Collins
... eyes from the day's absorbing duties for a look over the whole field, and unless we once and again make searching inventory of our convictions, our purposes, our methods, our attainments, we are in danger of letting ourselves slip along the groove of the taken-for-granted and our work loses in power as we allow ourselves to become leaners instead of leaders. May we not, as if it were a new idea, rouse to the seriousness of the mediocre habit indulged in by young people capable ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... thoughts ran in the same doleful groove, until the time for work came to an end, and he found himself in the playground, and free to indulge his melancholy for a few minutes in solitude; for the others were still loitering about in the schoolroom, ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... was silence for a few moments; but Gertrude knew she had succeeded. Her father had been wavering, but she had stirred him to passion, and his thoughts had suddenly returned to the groove they would not leave again. The fixed idea had once more possessed him; unavailing sorrow and longing for justice would drive him on along the course ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... women had to break the dry wood to keep up the fires. They had no tools. So the men made a stone ax with a groove. Then they put a handle on the grooved stone and fastened it with rawhide. This was used. Then they wanted something better to break the wood. So ...
— Myths and Legends of the Great Plains • Unknown
... nussin' impossible dreams 'ev a nationality which ther kentry couldn't support ef once obtained; proud ez Lucifer of a past which hez little in it 'cept wrong 'nd tyranny 'nd sufferin'; all ther exertions confined in a narrer groove, all ther work of no avail because uv indirection; clingin' ter homes which keeps 'em helpless 'nd only accomplishin' somethin' when transplanted to other fields, 'nd then carryin' on ther world's work, fiten' ...
— The Wedge of Gold • C. C. Goodwin
... tapering and very slender just below the Anthera, arising from the same part as (and placed opposite to the base of) the Nectary the lower part of it broader, somewhat fleshy, cartilaginous, and of the same nature as the inferior part of the Nectary, with a groove as that has on the inside, so that before the flower expands, the bases of each are like two half tubes, the sides of which, nearly touching each other, wholly enclose the Pistillum; as the fructification ...
— The Botanical Magazine Vol. 8 - Or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis
... smothered," Nurse Byloe said; and, putting her hand to her throat, unclasped the catch of the necklace of gold beads she had worn since she was a baby,—a bead having been added from time to time as she thickened. It lay in a deep groove of her large neck, and had not troubled her in breathing before, since the day when her husband was ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... deception, may be inclosed in a painted tin box, about a foot high, with a hole at top, and should stand on four feet, to let the smoke of the lantern escape. There must also be a glass planned to move up and down in the groove, and so managed by a cord and pulley that it may be raised up and let down by the cord coming through the outside of the box. On this glass the spectre (or any other figure you please) must be painted, in a contracted or squat form, as ...
— Entertainments for Home, Church and School • Frederica Seeger
... wind they made stirred her hair. The sight fascinated her and took her mind from her own sufferings. She could see the soldiers working at the levers and pulleys till the strings of the catapult or the boards of the balista were drawn to their places. Then the darts or the stones were set in the groove prepared to receive it, a cord was pulled and the missile sped upon its way, making an angry humming noise as it clove the air. At first it looked small; then approaching it grew large, to become small again to her following sight as its journey was accomplished. Sometimes, ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard
... d'Estrees was looked upon as the great stirrer-up of strife. His arrival at the Court of Madrid had interrupted the perfect harmony about to be re-established. Not a day passed without some one suffering from his intractable and arrogant temper." Madame des Ursins worked in the same groove with Torcy. The Cardinal's cabal, by way of revenge, "raked into the private life of the camerara-mayor," hoping to destroy by scandalous tales her reputation in the eyes of Louis XIV. and Madame de Maintenon. ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... tired of bazaars and desirous of adopting some better method of collecting money, if such could be devised, but until some brilliant or practical mind finds such a way, you are forced to move in the old groove and repeat ...
— The Portland Peerage Romance • Charles J. Archard
... When a piece of work has once been fairly started it can go on by itself and requires from the superintendent nothing but inspection and an occasional stimulus. If, however, something new is to be undertaken, a groove must be sought in which it can run, and the groove must be the shortest, surest, and most profitable. Clear-seeing eyes are needed, with a quick power to grasp. That Apollonius possessed these the old gentleman perceived on the first occasion. It pertained to ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... hundred and fifty dollars. The magic touch of the machine makes that wire nine hundred and fifty times more valuable. The operator sets them in regular rows upon a thin plate. When the plate is full, it is passed to another machine, which cuts the little groove upon the top of each,—and of course exactly in the same spot. Every one of those hundred and fifty thousand screws in every pound is accurately the same as every other, and any and all of them, in this pound or any pound, any one of the millions or ten millions ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... was something Oriental as well as selfish in occupying with a gallery of his ancestors, the majority of whom were, after all, very ordinary people, one of the fairest spots in the capital. Perhaps, however, what was most objected to was his trying to drive the art of the nation into a groove, the direction given by himself: in trying to inspire it with a particular spirit and that an ancient not a modern spirit, when he ought to let the spirit come of its own accord out of the mind ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... the age of Voltaire and of Frederick, and honestly conducted for the people, though never by the people, ended as such experiments are apt to end, in failure. The most that can be said is that the bureaucratic machine had become more firmly fixed in the groove which it was ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... trachea or windpipe, quitting the neck of the bird, passes downwards and backwards between the branches of the merry-thought towards the inferior edge of the keel, which is hollowed out to receive it. Into this groove the trachea passes, ... and after making three turns passes again forwards and upwards and ultimately backwards to be attached to the two lobes of the lungs." Yarrell, Brit. ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... may call a spade a spade. Talk has none of the freezing immunities of the pulpit. It cannot, even if it would, become merely aesthetic or merely classical like literature. A jest intervenes, the solemn humbug is dissolved in laughter, and speech runs forth out of the contemporary groove into the open fields of nature, cheery and cheering, like schoolboys out of school. And it is in talk alone that we can learn our period and ourselves. In short, the first duty of a man is to speak; that is his chief business in this world; and talk, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... see it in your face, so don't take the trouble to deny it. I had hoped that your plunge into what you styled the 'literature of assassination' would not last—that a good night's rest would turn your thoughts into another groove." ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... drawn the white cap over the face and arranged the rope. He came creaking in new boots down the sticky steps of the gallows, pulled a rope to free a support which ran on a single wheel in an iron groove, and the man was dead in a second. The white cap fitted close to his face, and the thin white linen took a momentary stain of purple, as if a bag of blackberries had been bruised and had suddenly exuded the juice of the fruit. ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray
... and, at the same time, Dr. Surtaine was called aside by a man with a shipping-bill. Looking down the line of workers, Hal saw that each one was simply opening, reading, and marking with a single stroke, the letters from a distributing groove. To her questioner Milly Neal was ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... had perfected his ball, it was tried in the three-groove rifle, for which it was intended, with the most satisfactory results, and was fired an indefinite number of times without the slightest difficulty. It appears, however, that this successful trial was not sufficient to satisfy the new-born zeal of the authorities. ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... golden-yellow, as in other cases. The difference in color was then supposed to depend upon individual peculiarities, but the true explanation will be given farther on. With this gear-drill-stock, upon a larger ring, one inch in diameter and three eighths of an inch in width, in a groove upon its periphery one fourth of an inch in width, and across the sides of the ring in two directions, I wound three thousand four hundred and eighty-four yards, or nearly two miles, of silk. The length was estimated by ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... not permitted to sway. The agricultural probe is an instrument which I first saw slung over my friend Baddely's shoulders, and of his invention. It is a sort of huge screw gimblet, or auger, which readily penetrates the ground by being worked with a long cross-handle, and brings up the subsoil in a groove to a considerable depth. Specimens of the soil and of rocks and minerals were collected, and a plan was adopted which is a useful lesson to future explorers. A small piece of linen or cotton, about four inches square, had two pieces of ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... of the grain of the wood can be seen on the mud mortar adhering to the bricks. There are also long, shallow grooves in the floor, a wide one near the west wall, three narrow ones parallel to that, and a short cross groove, all probably the places of beams which supported the wooden chamber. Besides these there was till recently a great mass of carbonised wood along the north side of the floor. This was probably part of the flooring of the tomb, which, beneath the woodwork, was covered with a layer of ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... was impossible; I'd been drawn in. Oh, Mitya, you get into this groove, and it isn't easy to get out again. Don't interrupt! You'll have a chance later. Well, then, listen! I caught cold in the town—it was winter; I stood in the cold, smartly dressed, in this coat! I was blowing on my fingers and jumping from foot to foot. Good people carried me ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky
... all my wood-work were to be without groove or moulding, if my mantels were to be of simple wood, if my doors were all to be machine-made, and my lumber of the second quality, I would have my bath-rooms, my conservatory, my sunny bow-windows, and my perfect ventilation,—and my house would then be so ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... forward as can be admitted, having regard to the practical limit of the weight of the block, and then, the block being carried to its place, is lowered on to the bottom, which has been prepared to receive it, and is secured to the work already executed by groove and tongue. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various
... less than one-fourth inch thick, this angle should be forty-five degrees on each piece (Figure 29), so that when they are placed together the extreme edges will meet at the bottom of a groove whose sides are square, or at right angles, to each other. This beveling should be done so that only a thin edge is left where the two parts come together, just enough points in contact to make the alignment easy to hold. With work of ...
— Oxy-Acetylene Welding and Cutting • Harold P. Manly
... groove formed in backing to receive the ends of the mill-boards. (2) The part of the binding that bends when the boards are opened. (3) Strips of leather or cloth used to strengthen ...
— Bookbinding, and the Care of Books - A handbook for Amateurs, Bookbinders & Librarians • Douglas Cockerell
... of it between his teeth, while he pressed against the rest of it with his hands. They were polished by means of the polishers, or ma^{n}[']-[|c]iq[|c]ade, two pieces of sandstone, each of which had a groove in the middle of one side. These grooves were brought together, and the ...
— Omaha Dwellings, Furniture and Implements • James Owen Dorsey,
... toward an intersecting spoke corridor. An alarm bell began to clang, and the sound vibrated against the metal walls. An armed man sprang from a side room and fired his weapon at Mryna. The discharge burned a deep groove in ...
— The Guardians • Irving Cox
... four-and-twenty,—selected out of near twenty thousand. It is possible, indeed, that you may feel more reason for shame than for elation at the thought. A barrister unknown to fame, but of respectable stantling, may be made a judge. Such a man may even, if he gets into the groove, be gradually pushed on till he reaches an eminence which probably surprises himself as much as any one else. A good speaker in Parliament may at sixty or seventy be made a Cabinet Minister. And we ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... inside of the wall, just as a moment before he had passed along its outer surface. At one spot he paused and tried a simple-looking tube that had been brought from the outside, through a convenient aperture, into the inside of the building. The thing looked harmless, yet it ran along the groove where the floor and wall joined, clear into that cheery inner office, where Archibald Wingate sat that very moment, signing his name to one of the most generous letters ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... not move. Perhaps the rain had swollen the logs, and they had jammed too tightly to let the bar slide in the groove. So I found myself in that gate, the mad horses and the savages before me, and my friends at my back, with only my arm ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... gradually became steeper till it ended in a flight of steps, our guides lighting us on our uncertain path, until we emerged into daylight by a large iron trap-door, pierced with innumerable small holes, the object of which, as well as of a groove in the rock communicating with the subterranean passage, was to enable the garrison, by filling the passage with smoke and flame, to suffocate and blind the besiegers should they ever succeed by any accident in penetrating thus far—in itself, as it seemed to me, a very ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant
... to rule; accommodate oneself to, adapt oneself to; rub off corners. be regular &c. adj.; move in a groove; follow observe the rules, go by the rules, bend to the rules ,obey the rules, obey the precedents; comply with, tally with, chime in with, fall in with; be guided by, be regulated by; fall into a custom,fall into a usage; follow the fashion, follow the crowd, follow the multitude; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... books wiv yearnings to improve, To 'eave meself out of me lowly groove, An' 'ere is orl the change I ever got: "'Ark at yer 'eart, an' you kin learn ...
— The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke • C. J. Dennis
... and fears in agonies long tossed— [Clinton hard fixed in method's rigid groove] The British Leader saw the game was lost; But, ...
— A Wreath of Virginia Bay Leaves • James Barron Hope
... are the hills around Elk Lake Where the blue of the sky is so still and clear It seems it was rubbed above them By the swipe of a giant thumb. And beyond these the little Traverse Bay Where the roar of the breeze goes round Like a roulette ball in the groove of the wheel, Circling the bay, And beyond these Mackinac and the Cheneaux Islands— And beyond these ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... Catenae of authorities; but on the ground on which this debate raged, the appeal was a pertinent and solid one. Yet to High Church Oxford and its rulers, all this was strange doctrine. Proof and quotation might lie before their eyes, but their minds still ran in one groove, and they could not realise what they saw. The words meant no harm in the venerable folio; they meant perilous heresy in the modern Tract. When the authorities had to judge of the questions raised by the movement, they were unprovided with the adequate ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... showed evidence of having been fused before weathering had cut into them. At first he had thought the column was a gravestone. But there was no inscription upon it. There was nothing but a thin deep groove that ran horizontally around the four sides, several inches from ...
— Dead Man's Planet • William Morrison
... his singed mustache. I can see him now with his foolish, angry eyes and his long, thin, puzzled face. Then he began to talk. I have always said that the English are not really a phlegmatic or a taciturn nation if you stir them out of their groove. No one could have talked in a more animated way than this colonel. Lady Jane put ...
— The Adventures of Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... which was placed upon city walls, was a great cross-bow for hurling arrows upon an enemy. In it was combined the bow and arrow, and the sling. The mammoth arrow was put in the groove, the twisted ropes were connected with levers, and the powerful recoil would send the strong and sharp arrow a ...
— Half Hours in Bible Lands, Volume 2 - Patriarchs, Kings, and Kingdoms • Rev. P. C. Headley
... spreading base of concrete, and divided perpendicularly down the middle into Titanic halves, these being snugly fitted one to the other by a series of triangular corrugations, a variation of the familiar tongue and groove. Interlacing the ponderous mass, from corner to corner, were huge steel bolts, and the hulking heads of more bolts, some forty on each of the four sides, showed that the whole might be split into halves at will, and readily made whole again, one enormous side sliding ...
— The Diamond Master • Jacques Futrelle
... Sessions and committed to loathsome dungeons. Matters had advanced since then. The Church had returned in its full power and privileges together with the monarchy, and everything went back into its old groove. Every Act passed for the disestablishment and disendowment of the Church was declared a dead letter. Those of the ejected incumbents who remained alive entered again into their parsonages, and occupied their pulpits as of old; the surviving bishops returned to their ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... rope stretched from the summit of a cliff to the valley beneath and made fast to posts driven into the ground. The Badi sits astride on a wooden saddle, to which he is tied by thongs; the saddle is similarly secured to the bast or sliding cable, along which it runs, by means of a deep groove; sandbags are tied to the Badi's feet sufficient to secure his balance, and he is then, after various ceremonies and the sacrifice of a kid, started off; the velocity of his descent is very great, and the saddle, however well greased, emits a volume of smoke throughout ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... at the same time, the royal court was a scene devoid of any graces: the kings could not speak our language, and their feminine favourites were the reverse of fair or virtuous; whilst domestic hate ruled in the palace. Power then ran into a new groove of corruption and bribery; and the scene, vile in itself, was made viler by exaggeration and the retaliations of one political party on the other, whilst either side was equally lauded by its own party. Therefore we may reasonably conclude that matters were not ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... before described. Stones which lie underneath the glacier and are pushed along by it sometimes adhere to the ice, and as the mass glides slowly along at the rate of a few inches, or at the utmost 2 or 3 feet per day, abrade, groove, and polish the rock, and the larger blocks are reciprocally grooved and polished by the rock on their lower sides. As the forces both of pressure and propulsion are enormous, the sand acting like emery polishes the surface; the pebbles, like coarse gravers, scratch and furrow it; and the large stones ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... replaces the glass plate. When the speaker talks or the singer sings, his voice strikes against a delicate diaphragm and throws it into vibration, and the metal point attached to it traces on the wax of a moving cylinder a groove of varying shape and appearance called the "record." Every variation in the speaker's voice is repeated in the vibrations of the metal disk and hence in the minute motion of the pointer and in the consequent record ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... exactly fitted for my purpose, which I filled with gunpowder. I then took a strong oak plank to cover it, to which I fixed iron hooks, so that they could reach the handles of the mortar. I cut a groove in the side of the plank, that I might introduce a long match, which should burn at least two hours before it reached the powder. I placed the plank then over the mortar, fastened the hooks through the handles, surrounded it with pitch, and then bound some strong ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... betel, are an object of great attention: The ends of them, both in the upper and under jaw, are rubbed with a kind of whetstone, by a very troublesome and painful operation, till they are perfectly even and flat, so that they cannot lose less than half a line in their length. A deep groove is then made across the teeth of the upper jaw, parallel with the gums, and in the middle between them and the extremity of the teeth; the depth of this groove is at least equal to one-fourth of the thickness of the teeth, so that it penetrates ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... trace each beloved lineament, so much alike, and yet so different—half a portrait and half a caricature, half sublime and half ludicrous! The comical little imitation of her nose, with each dear little curve, with even a remainder of the tiny groove underneath the tip, and the tiny corresponding dimple underneath the chin! The soft silken fuzz which was some day to be Sylvia's golden glory! The delicate, sensitive lips, which were some day to quiver with feeling! I gazed at them and saw them ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... vertical line, which in one of the stratified rocks one might perhaps term the line of a fault, but which in a trap rock may merely indicate where two semi-molten masses had pressed against each other without uniting—just as currents of cooling lead, poured by the plumber from the opposite end of a groove, sometimes meet and press together, so as to make a close, polished joint, without running into one piece. The little angular opening forms the lower termination of the line, which, hollowing inwards, ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... away in an unsavory mass till early spring, and the wood ashes from the fireplaces were also stored. When the soap-making took place, the ashes were placed in a leach tub out of doors. This tub was sometimes made from the section of the bark of a birch tree; it was set loosely in a circular groove in a base of wood, or preferably of stone. Water was poured on the ashes, and the lye trickled from an outlet cut in the groove. The boiling of the lye and grease was an ill-smelling process, which was also carried on out ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... true in a poetical sense—the relation of the life of man to a taper; and if you will follow, I think I can make this clear. In order to make the relation very plain, I have devised a little apparatus which we can soon build up before you. Here is a board and a groove cut in it, and I can close the groove at the top part by a little cover. I can then continue the groove as a channel by a glass tube at each end, there being a free passage through the whole. Suppose I take a taper or candle (we ...
— The Chemical History Of A Candle • Michael Faraday
... to settle down into a pleasant groove of studies that took not too much time, movies, concerts, an occasional play by the Dramatic Society, perhaps a slumming party to a dance in Hastings Saturday nights, bull sessions, long talks with Henley in his office or at his ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... him in driving jerkline to Ragtown. Hiram had learned a great lesson, he felt. He had left the north woods to do something less prosaic than driving jerkline, and a series of peculiar incidents had forced him back into the same old groove again. Yet the once scorned, neglected task had brought him adventures and a fortune and a splendid girl. Over all this he wished to marvel with his old benefactor and friend, and Jo had readily consented to the trip. They had returned for Basil Filer's trial as the main witnesses ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... wept at a windmill that would not move, It puffed with its round red cheeks in vain; One sail stuck fast in a puzzling groove, And baby's breath ...
— Eric - or, Under the Sea • Mrs. S. B. C. Samuels
... hurrying, jostling crowd to impede his progress; indeed, as far as he could see up the Drive, there was not a pedestrian in sight. And then, as he walked, involuntarily, insistently, his mind harked back into the old groove again. ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... principle. When words do not enter as factors into a shared situation, either overtly or imaginatively, they operate as pure physical stimuli, not as having a meaning or intellectual value. They set activity running in a given groove, but there is no accompanying conscious purpose or meaning. Thus, for example, the plus sign may be a stimulus to perform the act of writing one number under another and adding the numbers, but the person performing the act will operate much as an automaton would unless he ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... side erect about half it's hight on the 2 first branches thence reclining backwards from the grooved side; it puts forth it's branches which are in reallyty long footstalks by pares from one side only and near the edges of the groove, these larger footstalks are also grooved cilindric and gradually tapering towards the extremity, puting forth alternate footstalks on either side of the grove near it's edge; these lesser footstalks the same in form as the first put forth from ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... with what he has done, if he does not comprehend the faults of his work, if his eye and brain are not educated artistically,—then he must stand like a machine working in a groove. ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... dish, standing order; Procrustean law; law of the Medes and Persians; hard and fast rule. V. conform to, conform to rule; accommodate oneself to, adapt oneself to; rub off corners. be regular &c adj.; move in a groove; follow observe the rules, go by the rules, bend to the rules, obey the rules, obey the precedents; comply with, tally with, chime in with, fall in with; be guided by, be regulated by; fall into a custom, fall into a usage; follow the fashion, follow the crowd, follow the multitude; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... go in two months! Well, once this boy business was over she'd get stronger. He began to plan a little trip for them. He'd take her away and they'd loaf about together somewhere. After all, dash it, they were young still. She'd got into a groove; he'd have to force her out of it, ...
— In a German Pension • Katherine Mansfield
... ten minutes, worked away on it with the chisel and hammer. Then he called up one of the others, and showed him what he was to do. All day they worked by turns and, though progress was very slow, by nightfall the groove was half ...
— On the Irrawaddy - A Story of the First Burmese War • G. A. Henty
... Stagholme to begin her new life; for which peaceful groove of existence she was by the way totally unfitted; for she had breathed the fatal air of Clapham since her birth. This atmosphere is terribly impregnated ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... thoughts wander in this groove, I often marvel at people electing to live in stuffy, smoky towns, when the charms of the country are at ...
— Through Canal-Land in a Canadian Canoe • Vincent Hughes
... making a lunge with a heavy shaft. The throwing-stick is also said by some arctic voyagers to be useful in giving directness of aim. Perhaps no other savage device comes so near in this respect to a gun barrel or the groove of a bow-gun. Its greatest advantages, however, are the firm grip which it gives in handling a harpoon or dart, and the longer time which it permits the hunter to apply the force of his arm to the propulsion of ...
— Throwing-sticks in the National Museum • Otis T. Mason
... intricate scheme of campaign, were to be called upon in the midst of his meditations to bully a private for not cleaning his buttons. Naturally, you were annoyed. Your giant brain, wrenched temporarily from its proper groove, expended its force in one tremendous reprimand of Comrade Jackson. It was as if one had diverted some terrific electric current which should have been controlling a vast system of machinery, and turned it on to annihilate ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... come to her? Had she accepted her lot, once back in the groove of fate, or had she rebelled, striking out for her own vivid desire of joy and song, of fame? Vickers would have liked to hear that she had rebelled, was making her own life,—had taken the other road than the one he had accepted for himself. His tender, idealizing heart could not hold a woman ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... south aisle, and another very beautiful one known as the Abbess's door at the extreme east end of the wall of the south nave aisle, in Norman style (see p. 26). The mouldings round the head are richly ornamented, and two twisted columns stand on each side of the door. Unfortunately a slanting groove has been cut through the upper mouldings of it. It is said that at one time a stonemason's shed stood here, probably the mason employed after the purchase of the church by the town, to keep the building ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: A Short Account of Romsey Abbey • Thomas Perkins
... would be an impertinence on my part were I to attempt—suddenly—to lift a man out of a fixed groove and career, and suggest to him another. I should expect to be sent to the devil—and serve me right. But in your case—correct me if I am wrong—you seem not yet to have discovered the groove that suits you. Now I am here to propose to ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... slender-cylindrical, covered with spine-bearing tubercles: flower-bearing areola axillary (with reference to tubercles), entirely separate from the terminal spine-bearing areola, although sometimes (Coryphantha) connected with it by a woolly groove along the upper face of the tubercle: ovary naked: seeds smooth or pitted: embryo usually straight, with short cotyledons. Originally defined by Linnaeus in his Systema, ...
— The North American Species of Cactus, Anhalonium, and Lophophora • John M. Coulter
... steady strain that never stops Is mightier than the fiercest shock; The constant fall of water drops Will groove the adamantine rock; We feel our noblest powers decay In feeble wars with ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... label Sohms' wax as sparingly as possible. It should be spread smoothly and without lumps. When putting on the skins lay them along the Skis from the tip towards the back and run your thumb down the line of the centre groove in the Ski, while you press the skin on evenly over ...
— Ski-running • Katharine Symonds Furse
... careful aim above the wall, resting my long rifle-barrel in a groove between the stones, and fired. Ever since, it has seemed to me that God, for some mysterious purpose of His own, deflected the speeding ball, for never before or since did I miss such aim. Yet miss I did, for while the old chief leaped wildly backward, his cheek fanned by the bullet, it was the ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... therefore fell into a regular groove of guard and picket duty. We longed to have a fight with the enemy, and still were doomed to remain in a state of masterly inactivity. At the fort the work was most trying, and resolved itself into a course ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths |
