"Nail" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... run away," announced Kittie, presently, with some abruptness; but no one but Bea, who was on the alert, saw how her mother started, with a force that ran her needle clear under her thumb nail, or how excessively pale she was as she wiped off the little drops ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... our galleys went, With cleaving prows in order brave To a speeding wind and a bounding wave— A gallant armament: Each bark built out of a forest-tree Left leafy and rough as first it grew, And nail'd all over the gaping sides, Within and without, with black bull-hides, Seethed in fat and suppled in flame, To bear the playful billows' game; So, each good ship was rude to see, Rude and bare to the outward view. But each upbore a stately tent Where cedar pales in ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... find in his bag. And the man what he showed 'em to was so terrible interested that nothing would do but he must come up to Dunnabridge and see the lot. He offered two hundred and fifty pound for the things on the nail; so Jonathan saw very clear that they must be worth a good bit more. They haggled for a week, and finally the owner went up to Exeter and got another chap to name a price. In the long run, the dealers halved the things, and Jonathan ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... slumped into corners on platforms—what happened to it in slides, in slots and pigeon-holes, in mail bags on noisy city sidewalks, in freight cars on awful silent sidings in the night, in depots, in junctions—if all the long story of this one letter could be written like the Lord's Prayer on a thumb nail and could be put in that little hole of information stamped on the envelope—what is it that the little autobiography of the letter would ...
— The Ghost in the White House • Gerald Stanley Lee
... few words with his companion, "how will this proposition suit you? All expenses, before and after the affair itself, of course refunded; one hundred thousand sesterces clear gain for doing the deed, twenty-five thousand sesterces for every poor fellow we have to nail up to satisfy the law, and you to be guaranteed against any evil consequence. ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... or rather genius, in whose hand a jews-harp is the lyre of Orpheus, a fiddle the harp of David, a chisel a hewer of heroic forms, a brush or a pen the scepter of souls, and, alas! a nail a picklock. ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... counsel me and bring you prosperity." A lean arm, a mere bone covered with a sun-tanned skin, reached for a key which was hanging from a nail in the wall. Without speaking, he unlocked the gate. Michael noticed the fleshlessness of the ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... The enormously long nail of his right index finger rested upon the opened page of the book, to which he seemed constantly to refer, dividing his attention between the volume, the contents of the test-tube, and the progress of a second experiment, or possibly a part of the ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... her nose in the most approved form of Algerine elegance. Then she dyed her nails and the palms of her hands dark-red with another substance named henna. The first of these takes about a week to remove, and the last can be got rid of only by the growth of the nail. Agnes was not aware of this, else she might have objected. They finished up the adornment of the face by sticking it all over ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... a fuss, let them,' he said. 'It is their way of persuading themselves that they are important.... If they put me in prison, I should just draw on the walls with a nail, and the time would soon go by. The difference between us and them is that they are in a hurry and we are not. There won't be much left of my Tempest by the time they've done with it.... The electricians ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... wrings my very soul. Silk hat, ruffled shirt, silver-buckled shoes, kid gloves, cane, velvet suit, with one two-inch pocket which is an insult to his sex,—how I pity the pathetic little caricature! Not a spot has he to locate a top, or a marble, or a nail, or a string, or a knife, or a cooky, or a nut; but as a bloodless substitute for these necessities of existence, he has a toy watch (that will not go) and an embroidered handkerchief ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... his chair; but he contemplated the nail on the middle finger of his left hand with absorbed interest, even bringing it nearer the light in order to ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... songs it is written, "Drink, Runes, must thou know, if thou wilt maintain thy power over the maiden thou lovest. Thou shalt score them on the drinking-horn, on the back of thy hand, and the word NAUD" (NEED—necessity) "on thy nail." Moreover, when it is remembered that the ladies of the house themselves minister on these occasions, it will be easily understood that all flinching is out of the question. What is a man to do, when a wicked little golden-haired maiden insists on ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... time, Signor Carlo, when a friend of ours, in order to win a favour of his beloved, filled his room with skulls and bones like a churchyard?' The most loathsome tasks were prescribed—to draw three teeth from a corpse or a nail from its finger, and the like; and while the hocus-pocus of the incantation was going on, the unhappy participants ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... so rotten and worm-eaten, as to make it surprising that she had not at once gone to the bottom, and he was afraid of doing anything to them lest he should make matters worse. Our only means, therefore, of stopping the leaks, was to nail some canvas we fortunately had with us over the bottom of the boat; having first carefully inserted some oakum between the planks, and rubbed ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... give. So if you know how to read, find someone who can't. If you've got a hammer, find a nail. If you're not hungry, not lonely, not in ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... excitedly. "I didn't change for football yesterday afternoon, but before going into the field I hung my watch up on a nail in the shed, and stupidly forgot all about it until I came to wind it up last night. Then it was too late to fetch it, and now ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery
... country keeps on growing and growing, and you're not content with half. You want everything,—all the new states must abolish slavery. And after a while you will overwhelm us, and ruin us, and make us paupers. Do you wonder that we contend for our rights, tooth and nail? They ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... on great matters of dissolution than to respect the departed. Julian could not help smiling at the child's evident discomfiture as he pursued his way towards Grosvenor Place. On one of the doorsteps of the big houses that drive respect like a sharp nail into the hearts of the poor passers-by, a ragged old woman was tumultuously squatting. Her gin-soddened face came, like a scarlet cloud, to the view from the embrace of a vagabond black bonnet, braided ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... to the ship they had hailed, in a sea that would swamp any other boat in half a minute, and so they would bring their letters on deck. Those who knew their story refused to take the letters, and then the sailors would nail them to the mast or lay them on the deck, with a heavy weight to keep them from blowing away, and go back to their own ship. So the letters sometimes reached their homes, for it was said to bring bad luck either to take their letters willingly ...
— The Wagner Story Book • Henry Frost
... hats, piled on top of one another, all as stiff as sheet-iron and trimmed with gay flowers. At the marble wash-stand stood Rena Kalski, the right bower of the business manager, polishing her diamond rings with a nail-brush. ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... with his fist. "I'm glad you said that," he cried triumphantly. "There's a lie in that, and I want to nail it. The man gives only his money, you say. Do you understand what that means where a hard-working devil is concerned? What has he got besides the few pennies he earns? When he gives his money, isn't ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... failing, the heart throbbing faintly and more faintly, all but vanquished, the breath, the poor breath, the poor helpless human spirit, sobbing and sighing, gurgling and rattling in the throat. No help! No help! He—he himself—his body to which he had yielded was dying. Into the grave with it. Nail it down into a wooden box, the corpse. Carry it out of the house on the shoulders of hirelings. Thrust it out of men's sight into a long hole in the ground, into the grave, to rot, to feed the mass of its creeping worms and to be ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... hole in the ice and dropping in a piece of ivory carved in the shape of a small fish. When the fish rises to examine this visitor, it is secured with a spear. The Eskimo fish spear has a central shaft with a sharp piece of steel, usually an old nail, set in the end. On each side is a piece of deer antler pointing downward, lashed onto the shaft with a fine line, and sharp nails, pointing inward, are set in the two fragments of antler. When this spear is thrust down on the fish, the ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... permanency in a transient world is terrifying. A permanent husband is a bore, and we do not know what to do with him. He cannot be put on a shelf. He cannot be hung on a nail. He will not go out of the house. There is no escape from him, and he is always the same. A smile of a certain dimension, moustaches of this inevitable measurement, hands that waggle and flop like those of automata—these are his. He eats this way and he drinks that way, and he will ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... The Alcalde bowed, murmured her title, and went lamely out of the house. He was plainly in an agony of uncertainty as to his duty, but he glanced at the Vicomtesse—and went, flipping the note nervously with his finger nail. He paused for a few low-spoken words with the tawdry constable, who sat down on the banquette after his chief had gone, still clinging to the bridle. The Vicomtesse went to the doorway, looked at him, and closed the battened doors. The constable did ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... get to the house you can hang the key on its nail behind the kitchen door," Reliance told her. "It is always ...
— A Dear Little Girl's Thanksgiving Holidays • Amy E. Blanchard
... the horse are long, straight, and strong, and the single toe (or hoof) means that the horse walks on the tip of one toe, and the hoof is in reality a large toe nail developed to protect the tip of the toe. To these features is due the great speed of the horse. Horses gather together in the field with the foals in the most protected part of the group, just as wild horses found it necessary to do for protection. ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... acquaintance. The female laid her eggs, and was about to brood them: some days elapsed, and the people saw the female still sitting on the eggs, but the male, flying about the nest, and sometimes settling on a nail, was herd to utter a very plaintive note, which betrayed his uneasiness. On a nearer examination the female was found dead on the nest, and, on her being removed, the male took his seat upon the eggs; but after remaining upon them about two hours, he went out, ...
— Domestic pleasures - or, the happy fire-side • F. B. Vaux
... With those he pierced them and with clinchers bound. Long and capacious as a shipwright forms Some bark's broad bottom to out-ride the storms, So large he built the raft; then ribb'd it strong From space to space, and nail'd the planks along; These form'd the sides: the deck he fashion'd last; Then o'er the vessel raised the taper mast, With crossing sail-yards dancing in the wind; And to the helm the guiding rudder join'd (With yielding osiers fenced, to break the force Of surging waves, and steer the steady ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... all in vain that warning strain—the king has crost the tide— But never more off Samos shore his bark was seen to ride! The Satrap false his life has ta'en, that monarch bold and free, And his limbs are black'ning in the blast, nail'd to the gallows-tree! ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... our bodies, by the seeds of the million years that flow in our veins, material things are spiritually discerned. There is not science enough nor scientific method enough in the schools of all Christendom for a man to listen intelligently to his own breathing with, or to know his own thumb-nail. Is not his own heart thundering the infinite through him—beating the eternal against his sides—even while he speaks? And does he not know it ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... were a dozen or more bottles that looked as if they might contain chemicals; a square black box stood on the table and also a brass spring and what resembled a cord hanging from one side. Bob decided it was a bomb. From a nail in the center of the ceiling a small alligator was suspended by its tail. Bob recognized the missing Percy, and decided that this must be the headquarters of the gang that had used an alligator as its symbol, and traced a picture of it on ...
— Bob Cook and the German Spy • Tomlinson, Paul Greene
... generation of a female. A little over three inches from the anus was a rudimentary limb with a movable articulation; it measured five inches in length and tapered to a fine point, being furnished with a distinct nail, and it contracted strongly to irritation. Marie, the left child, was of fair complexion and more strongly developed than Rosa. The sensations of hunger and thirst were not experienced at the same time, and one might be asleep while the other was crying. ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... turned slightly underneath the hand will form its support, and the pen, these fingers and the muscles of the arm near the elbow form the only points of rest or contact on desk or paper. The pen should point over the shoulder, and should be so held that it may pass the root of the nail on the second finger, and about opposite the knuckle of the hand. An unnatural or cramped position of the hand, like such a position of the body, is opposed to good writing, and after many years of observation and study, all teachers concur in the one position above described, as being ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... describe every nook of that darling old house, and every thing surrounding it, from its old-fashioned chimneys—wherein the domestic swallows have sung their little ones to sleep each successive summer, time out of mind—to the unseemly nail that projected its Judas-point from one of the crosspieces of that same little gate, and which always contrived to give a triangular tear to my flying robes every time they fluttered through that dear little gate. Just ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... time I had in a brig off Hatteras," observed Teddy, who had somewhat recovered his composure; "we had to cut away both masts, you persave, and to scud under a scupper nail driv into the deck, wid a man ready to drive it further as ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... priest, "see what it is to be a bishop in any church! The moment a man becomes a bishop, he fastens tooth and nail upon luxury, as if a mitre was a dispensation for enjoying the world that they have sworn to renounce. Dionysius, look about you! Isn't this worth ...
— Going To Maynooth - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... Christianity is dying in this country. We are being more and more filled with the spirit of militarism, which means the death of religion; while every new Dreadnought, which drains the nation of its treasure, is another nail driven ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking
... and T. Watters, On Yuan Chwang, i. 390). It is a striking example of the way in which such legends grow, that it is only the latest of these authorities, Hsuean Tsang, who says that, though ostensibly approaching the Buddha with a view to reconciliation, Devadatta had concealed poison in his nail with the object ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... ground sloped towards the house door; so that in rainy weather, when the pond was full, the kitchen was overflowed; and at all times the floor was so damp and soft, that the print of the nails of brogues was left in it wherever the wearer set down his foot. To be sure these nail-marks could scarcely be seen, except just near the door or where the light of the fire immediately shone; because, elsewhere, the smoke was so thick, that the pig might have been within a foot of you without your seeing ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... nothing but laugh. "I've seen a few passages of arms," he said. "By Jove, you don't know what war is till you see two —— at it tooth and nail. Two—what, Lucy? Oh, I mean fine ladies; they have no mercy. Her Grace will set her claws into the fair countess. And ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... moochin' days of me giddy youth, When I kidded meself a treat, I'd have pass him one ez a gooey. 'Strewth On the track iv Huns, he's a eight-day sleuth, 'N' at tearin' into 'em nail 'n' tooth He's got ...
— 'Hello, Soldier!' - Khaki Verse • Edward Dyson
... with a daredevil recklessness that would have done honor to prehistoric man. That part of their adventures is a record that exceeds the wildest darings of fiction. Their boats were called kotches. They were some sixty feet long, flat bottomed, planked with green timber. Not a nail was used. Where were nails to come from six thousand miles across the frozen tundras? Indeed, iron was so scarce that at a later day when ships with nails ventured on {296} these seas natives were detected diving below to pull the nails from the timbers with their teeth. Instead of nails, the ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... about. A plow team occupied two of the stalls, and though they were heavy Clydesdales with no speed in them, they would be capable of traveling faster than a man on foot. As he could not find a saddle, he ran back to the house and returned with a blanket. A bit and bridle hung on a nail, he found a girth, but his hands were cold and he spent some time adjusting straps and fastening on the blanket before he led one of ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... scramble-rush, and a barking and squeaking, and a terrible monster stood before me. It was something like a dog and something like a broom, something like being thrown out of the larder by cook—I can't describe it. It caught me up, and in less than a moment it had hung my tabby skin on a nail ...
— Pussy and Doggy Tales • Edith Nesbit
... Croubel whispered to him: "Bid seven on no suit. You've got the joker." Her delicate forefinger, its nail shining, was pointing at a curious card in ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... the practice of employing the Indian tribes in our army, arising from the fact that the orator handled the subject with clean hands. Colonel Barre, excited by it, declared that if it were printed and published he would nail it on every church-door by the side of the king's proclamation for a general fast; and Governor Johnson said it was fortunate for Lord North and Germaine that the galleries had been cleared before the speech was uttered, as the indignation and enthusiasm ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... perseverance, and the pertinency of her remarks. The editor of The Rochester Democrat said the next morning, that "whatever the schoolmasters might think of Miss Anthony, it was evident that she hit the nail on the head." ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... cumbersome instrument, heavy, with deep pine socket for the stump, and a projecting brace which passed under a leather belt around the man's waist. This instrument he used with the dexterity of a third hand. As Thorpe watched him, he drove in a projecting nail, kicked two "turkeys" dexterously inside the open door, and stuck the armed end of his peg-leg through the top and bottom of the whisky jug that one of the new arrivals had set down near the door. ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... moor, picket, harness, chain; fetter &c. (restrain) 751; lock, latch, belay, brace, hook, grapple, leash, couple, accouple[obs3], link, yoke, bracket; marry &c. (wed) 903; bridge over, span. braze; pin, nail, bolt, hasp, clasp, clamp, crimp, screw, rivet; impact, solder, set; weld together, fuse together; wedge, rabbet, mortise, miter, jam, dovetail, enchase[obs3]; graft, ingraft[obs3], inosculate[obs3]; entwine, intwine[obs3]; interlink, interlace, intertwine, intertwist[obs3], interweave; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Now the poor thing had already done much. Liquor in these far inland countries, where there are no distilleries, reaches the enormous price of from sixteen to twenty dollars a gallon. So she mildly but firmly refused, upon which Golpin seized from the nail, where it was hung, a very heavy key, which he knew to be that of the little cellar underground, where the woman kept the liquor. She tried to regain possession of it, but during the struggle Golpin beat her brains out with a bar of iron that was in the room. This deed perpetrated, ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... "Well hit won't tak me long ter git breakfus reddy," and Mrs. Pervis darted into the kitchen. Teck Pervis dipped his hands into the basin, poured the cool water on his head until his gray hair hung in thick mats over his face then leisurely drawing the towel from the nail beside the door, lazily wiped his head and face. The smell of fried bacon and delicious coffee arose from the kitchen; the rattling of dishes was to him sufficient token of the putting of victuals on the table. Teck Pervis sauntered ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... hypocrites: they must be, since as educated men they could not well believe the fables they were paid to teach! But it was hard to associate hypocrisy with Mr. Stafford, whose fond ambition it was to nail Lawrence Hyde to lecture on his Chinese travels before the Bible Class. "Oh, nothing religious," he explained, holding his victim firmly by the coat as Lawrence edged away. "Only half an hour's story-telling to put a few new ideas into their heads—as if you were talking to a young ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... a fourteenth-century patrician, which had the uncommon advantage of a lower jaw hinged to the upper. She proudly clapped it up and down for their astonishment, and waited, with a toothless smile, to let them discover the bead of a nail artfully figured in the skull; then she gave a shrill cackle of joy, and gleefully explained that the wife of this patrician had killed him by driving a nail into his temple, and had been fitly beheaded ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Alex rose once more to his knees, and began a cautious examination of the door. The cause of its refusal to open was soon apparent. The old hinges had given, allowing it to sag and catch against a raised nail-head in the sill. ...
— The Young Railroaders - Tales of Adventure and Ingenuity • Francis Lovell Coombs
... centuries old. Their growth is almost imperceptible, being scarcely to be noticed in the lapse of twenty or thirty years. The wood of the palma de cobija is excellent for building. It is so hard, that it is difficult to drive a nail into it. The leaves, folded like a fan, are employed to cover the roofs of the huts scattered through the Llanos; and these roofs last more than twenty years. The leaves are fixed by bending the extremity of the footstalks, which have been beaten beforehand between ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... Bristles, now more than ever determined on finishing the terror of the neighboring farmers. "We've just got to nail him, boys. Don't let him shoot past you! Pound him on the head! Knock him galleywest! That was a socker, Fred; you've got him down, I tell you! Now, everyone pile in and we'll end ...
— Fred Fenton Marathon Runner - The Great Race at Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... of these days, I will write an article for the 'Atlantic,' that your papa need not have all the say to himself: however, I believe he has hit the nail on the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... don't like you. The explanation of that is simple enough. You've heard some one saying something about you, or pretending to repeat something Lu and Ruth have said about you. There! Now haven't I hit the nail on ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... continued to stare at the leaf. It had been scratched or rather written upon with a sharp tool, such as a nail, and wherever this instrument had touched it, the acid juice oozing through the outer skin had turned a rusty blood colour. Presently I found the beginning of the scrawl, and read this in English, and covering the surface ...
— Maiwa's Revenge - The War of the Little Hand • H. Rider Haggard
... earth. You can't leave it to me. I don't want to love you. I'm perfectly happy as I am. If you want me, win me, carry me off my feet and then you shall see what it is to be loved. It's entirely up to you, understand that. I shall fight against it tooth and nail, but I give you leave to do your best. ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... Giant-Foe didst seize and rend, Fierce, fearful, long, and sharp were fang and nail; Thou who the Lion and the Man didst blend, Lord of the ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... he, "I said: thus endeth the worst man in the world. Well done, lion-tamer! thou art no ill guest, and hast paid on the nail for meat, drink and lodging. But what shall we do now? Then thou saidst; 'Well, I suppose thou wilt be for slaying me.' 'Nay,' said I, 'We will not slay thee; at least not for this, nor now, nor without terms.' Thou saidst: 'Perchance then thou wilt let ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... five o'clock—for her hours with Dora were not yet regular—he forthwith became her slave. She set him to draw up the fire while she got the tea, and then, without taking any notice of David, she marched John upstairs to help her hang her curtains, lay her carpet, and nail up the coloured fashion plates and newspaper prints of royalties or beauties with which she was adorning the ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... circles in the snow-white alkali and at last he sat down to await the dawn. There was something eerie about this pursuit, if pursuit it was, for while the horse had been watered from the bucket at the well, its rider had not left a track. Not a heel-mark, not a nail-point, and the last of the water had been dropped craftily on the spot where he had mounted. That was enough—Wunpost knew he had met his match. He watered his mules again, rode west into the mesquite brush and at sun-up he was hid ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge
... Curate? 'tis a Paratour That comes to tell ye a delightfull story Of an old whore ye have, and then to teach ye What is the penaltie; Laugh at me now Sir, What Legacie would ye bequeath me now, (And pay it on the nail?) to fly ...
— The Spanish Curate - A Comedy • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... put there: it was the radish-row; these must be radish leaves. She examined them very closely, so that she might know a radish next time. The little leaves, no bigger than half your little-finger nail, grew in twos,—two on each tiny stem; they ...
— Stories to Tell to Children • Sara Cone Bryant
... suddenly, however, the old statesman died, and his fiddle was heard no more across the valley in the quiet of the evening, but was left untouched for the dust to gather on it where he himself had hung it on the nail in the kitchen under his hat. Then when life seemed to the forlorn girl a wide blank, a world without a sun in it, Angus Ray went over for the first time as a suitor to the cottage under Castenand, and ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... axes, several bill-hooks, a good hatchet with hammer head and nail-puller should be in the tool kit. In addition, each man should be provided with a belt knife and a machete with sheath. Collins makes the best machetes. His axes, too, are excellent. The bill-hook, called foice ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... creep in and lie at full length inside the temple. The Emperor, advancing toward me from among his courtiers, all most magnificently clad, surveyed me with great admiration, but kept beyond the length of my chain. He was taller by about the breadth of my nail than any of his Court, which alone was enough to strike awe into the beholders, and graceful and majestic. The better to behold him, I lay down on my side, so that my face was level with his, and he stood three yards off. However, ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... that the Little Doctor had not returned from Denson's, where she had been summoned to attend one of the children, who had run a rusty nail into her foot. She had gone alone, for Dr. Cecil was learning to make bread, and had refused to budge from the kitchen till her ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower
... General Epistle of April, 1852, announced two potteries in operation, a small woollen factory begun, a nail factory, wooden bowl factory, and many grist and saw mills. The General Epistle of October, 1855, enumerated, as among the established industries, a foundery, a cutlery shop, and manufactories of locks, cloth, leather, hats, cordage, brushes, ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... before in all my life, and I have never seen any such since. They had never seen a ship before, I should think. I thought they did not know much more than the white bears. Why, they would sell almost all the clothes they had on, if we would give them a few pieces of glass, or a nail or two. One of the women who came to the ship had a little girl about four years old, and she said she would give us that girl, if we would let her have a tin pan ...
— Jack Mason, The Old Sailor • Theodore Thinker
... venture life and limb for every individual present, he drank to the health of the whole company out of a wooden beaker. The cup went round and every one uttered the same vow as be set it to his lips. Then one after the other they received the beggar's purse, and each hung it on a nail which he had appropriated to himself. The shouts and uproar attending this buffoonery attracted the Prince of Orange and Counts Egmont and Horn, who by chance were passing the spot at the very moment, and on entering the house were boisterously pressed by Brederode, as host, to remain ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... no mercy. One of them carried two great nails, such as those portrayed in pictures of the Crucifixion; the other bore a mallet: the first placed a nail upright over one of the old man's eyes; the other struck it with the hammer, and drove it into his head. The throat was pierced in the same way with the second nail; and thus the guilty soul, stained throughout its career with crimes of violence, was in its turn ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Wilkinson blushed until he was nearly as red as the other. "May I ask what I can do for you?" he asked, picking up his stethoscope and tapping it gently against his thumb-nail. ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... yard, three quarters, half-yard, quarter, nail, Thou flea, thou nit, thou winter cricket thou: Away thou rag, thou quantity, thou remnant. 12 SHAKS.: Tam. of the S., Act iv., ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various
... Haskins, after some argument and much suggestion, was entitled "Claw-Hammer." Such titles as "Deer-Foot," "Rail-Hopper," "Back-Flip Bill," "Wind-Splitter," and the like were discarded in favor of "Claw-Hammer"—for the unfortunate Bill had stepped on a rusty nail in his recent exodus from the lion's den, and was at the time suffering from a swollen and inflamed foot—really a serious injury, although scoffed at by the good-natured Bill himself despite Mrs. Bailey's solicitude and solution ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... that told-you-so stuff," Bud growled. "You never figured anything of the kind, and you know it." He pulled his heavy sweater down off a nail and put it on, scowling because the sleeves had to be pulled ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... is the amount?" asked Jim; and, when the figure was named (it was generally two or three dollars), paid upon the nail and offered a bonus in the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Before the cock crew they were ready, and the Abbot said the mass of the Holy Trinity, and when it was done they left the church and went to horse. And my Cid embraced Dona Ximena and his daughters, and blest them; and the parting between them was like separating the nail from the quick flesh: and he wept and continued to look round after them. Then Alvar Fanez came up to him and said, Where is your courage, my Cid? In a good hour were you born of woman. Think of our road now; these sorrows will yet be turned ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various
... Nail to the mast her holy flag; Set every threadbare sail; And give her to the God of Storms, The lightning ...
— Cupology - How to Be Entertaining • Clara
... great part of the fruit is wasted. If, instead of fish, he has flesh, he must have some succedaneum for a knife to divide it; and for this purpose a piece of bamboo is tossed to him, of which he makes the necessary implement by splitting it transversely with his nail. While all this has been doing, some of his attendants have been employed in beating bread-fruit with a stone-pestle upon a block of wood; by being beaten in this manner, and sprinkled from time to time with water, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... to the front door with me, an' I thought I'd jest step round an' nail up t'other one," he said, in the tone of one conscious of right. "There was some nails in the wood-shed. Then I heard somebody steppin' round inside, an' ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... she set Charlie down in front of the hearth, and proceeded to shut the cottage door, which had been left open as they entered,—and locking it, dropped an iron bar across it for the night. Then she threw off her cloak, and hung it up on a nail in the wall, and bending over a lamp which was burning low on the table, turned up its wick a little higher. Helmsley watched her in a kind of stupefied wonderment. As the lamplight flashed up on her features, he saw that she was not a girl, but a woman who seemed to have thought and ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... winter rain ends with a cold snap, and every twig and seed is encased in a transparent armour of ice, then starvation stalks close to all the feathered kindred. Then is the time to scatter crumbs and grain broadcast, to nail bones and suet to the tree-trunks and so awaken hope and life in the shivering little forms. If a bird has food in abundance, it little fears the cold. I have kept parrakeets out through the blizzards and storms of a severe winter, seeing them play and frolic ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... is sound and firm, as also the nail on which the specimen hangs, otherwise your own, or your stag's, head may come to grief. Plaster heads being very heavy at first, before drying, it is as well to get them dried, if possible, in advance of the mounting, to obviate great weight, and also ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... was finished. Lewis the saddler was ready to nail down the carpets and hanging. Ivo offered to help him too; but being gruffly repelled, he sat down upon his heap of chips, and looked at the mountains, behind which the sun was setting in a sea of fire. His father's whistle aroused him, and he ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... prosimii, or "half apes," including the lemurs, are nearly all arboreal forms. Perhaps they were driven to this life by their more powerful competitors. The arboreal life developed the fingers and toes, and most of these end, not with a claw, but with a nail. The little group has much diversity of structure, and at present finds its home mainly in Madagascar; though in earlier times apparently occurring all over the globe. The brain is more highly developed than in the average ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... of the husband before the caste committee, and a divorced woman is at liberty to marry again. The Nais worship all the ordinary Hindu deities. On the Dasahra and Diwali festivals they wash and revere their implements, the razor, scissors and nail-pruners. They pay regard to omens. It is unpropitious to sneeze or hear the report of a gun when about to commence any business; and when a man is starting on a journey, if a cat, a squirrel, a hare or a snake should cross the road in front ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... in their lives have been eyewitnesses to the phenomena, supernatural and divine. It must not however be understood that anything like a regular worship is paid to the sea by these people, any more than we should conclude that people in England worship witches when they nail a horseshoe on the threshold to prevent their approach, or break the bottoms of eggshells to hinder them from sailing in them. It is with the inhabitants of Lampong no more than a temporary sentiment of fear and respect, which a little familiarity soon effaces. Many of them ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... stags were slain. Then Oisin grew wearied of hunting, and as he plunged his sharp black hunting-knife into the throat of the last stag, he thought of the sword of magic temper that hung idle by his side in the City of Youth, or rested from its golden nail in his bed-chamber, and he said to Niam, "Has thy father never a foe to tame, never a wrong to avenge? Surely the peasant is no man whose hand forgets the plough, nor the warrior whose hand forgets the sword hilt." Niam looked on him strangely for a while and as if she did not ...
— The High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances of Ancient Ireland • T. W. Rolleston
... Well, now go ahead and nail up the rest of these boxes. We want to get started as soon as we can," and the colored man got busy, murmuring from time to time something about ...
— Tom Swift in Captivity • Victor Appleton
... Union!" amended Dr. Melton grimly. He subsided after this into one of his fidgety, grimacing, finger-nail-gnawing reveries. He was wondering whether he dared tell Lydia of a talk he had had that morning with her father. After a look at Lydia's flushed, tired face, he decided that he would better not; but as the two ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... lithe, healthy figures of the children in the stream, are some compensation for the lack of London mud, London fog, and London illustrations of practical Christianity in the Isle of Dogs and the Bermondsey purlieus. I don't know whether I am knocking the last nail into the completed coffin of my own contention, but I believe every right-minded man returns from the Tropics a good deal more of a Communist than when he ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... writing-table, was a raised wooden dais or bed, like that in the coach-house, a good six feet square, with sides to it, perhaps six inches high. Tara watched the making of this dais, and saw the master cover its floor with a kind of sawdust that had a strong, pleasant smell, and then nail down a tightly stretched piece of old carpet over that, making altogether, as she thought, a very excellent bed. And as such Tara used it by night, but in the daytime she usually preferred to stretch herself beside the writing-table, or on the rug by the door, where the sunshine formed a pool ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... right in the morning, Mr Large," said Tom; "I believe you've hit the right nail on the head; but we shan't starve; see, we've brought plenty of food, and we left fifty times as many behind us, waiting till we go ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... crush one temple in upon the brain. So swift and sudden had been the whole thing, that, on turning the wheel, his lifeless body was still inclining on its periphery, retained erect, I believe, in consequence of some part of his coat getting attached, to the head of a nail. This was the first serious sorrow of my life. I had always regarded my father as one of the fixtures of the world; as a part of the great system of the universe; and had never contemplated his death as a possible thing. That another revolution might occur, and carry the country back under the dominion ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... the required sum. The native thumbed it, pocketed it, lifted his coat from a nail behind the door and started across the ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... Lovey Mary, hanging her dripping coat on a nail. "I'll stay with her now. Don't talk, ...
— Lovey Mary • Alice Hegan Rice
... revolver, and after spinning the cylinder under his finger-nail, put it back in its holder again, and the men, taking this as an encouraging promise of immediate action, began to examine their weapons again for the twentieth time, and there was a chorus of short, muffled clicks as triggers were drawn back and cautiously lowered and levers ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... pious Theodelinda Could be recompense more sweet Than the nail, forever sacred, That once pierced her Saviour's feet? Which, when rounded to a circlet, (To fine wire beaten down,) Then became the precious basis Of the Lombards' ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... by the fast young men of the day, are called "The Piccadilly three-folds." Now, if this goes on until they get to a "nail in depth, and stiffened with yellow starch, and double wired," I think it will only be proper to put a heavy ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 211, November 12, 1853 • Various
... before closing this chapter. One was the peculiar skin of the whale. It was a bluish-black, and as thin as gold-beater's skin. So thin, indeed, and tender, that it was easily scraped off with the finger-nail. Immediately beneath it, upon the surface of the blubber, was a layer or coating of what for want of a better simile I must call fine short fur, although unlike fur it had no roots or apparently any hold upon the blubber. Neither was ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... skin of his body just scratched by a cut from the hind leg. Had this person been any nearer the kangaroo, his bowels would have been torn open. The middle toe projecting and being armed with a strong nail, enable them to inflict dreadful wounds, and frequently to kill dogs. It is seldom, indeed, that they will attack a kangaroo in front; old dogs never do, but have a very clever way of throwing the smaller kind by the stump of the ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... putting my hand in my pocket. "Oh, it's a crimson nail in my boot," he said. "I thought I got the blanky thing out ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... git somebody to ketch de sorrel for me. He wuz cotched arfter awhile, an' I hed some money, so I got some pine plank an' made a coffin dat evenin', an' wrapt Marse Chan's body up in de fleg, an' put 'im in de coffin; but I didn' nail de top on strong, 'cause I knowed ole missis wan' see 'im; an' I got a' ambulance an' set out for home dat night. We reached dyar de nex' evenin', arfter travellin' all dat night an' all ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various
... he stood, grasping his sword, prepared, and looking quickly right and left, suddenly he saw a thing which rivetted his gaze to it, as if with an iron nail. ...
— An Essence Of The Dusk, 5th Edition • F. W. Bain
... son Edwin; his good son, who had never given him a single care. He declared this settling of Edwin had been to him almost like the days when he himself used to come of evenings, hammer in hand, to put up shelves in the house, or nail the currant-bushes against the wall, doing everything con amore, and with the utmost care, knowing it would come under the quick observant ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... should be well washed and dried, tepid water, scentless soap, and a smooth towel being used. The nails should have a vigorous rubbing with a good nailbrush in the morning before your meals and before you go to bed at night. The nail file and nail scissors must be used as often as possible. Remember, dirty finger nails betray the vulgar and the unkempt. A man ...
— The Complete Bachelor - Manners for Men • Walter Germain
... doubtful if in all its hothouse garden of women the Hotel Bon Ton boasted a broken finger nail or that little brash place along the forefinger that tattles so of potato ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst |
