"Plied" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... mightier than the sword. The pen of Jefferson announced to the world, the birth of the child of the ages; the sword of Washington defended it in its cradle, but it would have perished there had it not been for the brave women of that day who plied the needle and made the quilts that warmed it, and who nursed it and rocked it through the perils of its infancy, into the strength of a giant. The quilt was attached to a quadrangular frame suspended from the ceiling; and the good women sat ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... the highest profits of an orchard, a field of rye, or a distillery? Oh, to be a drunkard is to destroy the soul as well as the body: and what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? And are you yourselves in no danger of intemperance, plied as you are by so many allurements? Look around you and see how many strong men, how many of the wise, the moral, the amiable, and the apparently pious, have fallen before the fascinations of this prince of serpents. And are you safe who stand even within the ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... The men now plied the paddles again, and they were presently within a few yards of the rock, floating towards it, though their efforts were suspended. This rock was not large, being merely some five or six feet high, only half of ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... none. He graduated from the University of Hard Knocks, and he never forgot this severe Alma Mater when he became President of the United States. He was just as plain, I just as humble, as in the days when he split rails or plied a boat on the Sangamon. He did not use big words, but he used the words of the people, and in such a way as to make them beautiful. His Gettysburg address is an English classic, one of the great ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... the sunlight and air about them, they ran through wide forests all their own, or plied their bark canoes up and ...
— Stories the Iroquois Tell Their Children • Mabel Powers
... own artillery and by the guns upon the hill, charged right up to the position. The British, however, repulsed them, and the guards, carried away by the excitement of the moment, followed them with reckless ardor. The French reserves of infantry and cavalry came up, the artillery plied the British with shot and shell, the fugitives rallied and again came to the attack, and the Guards fell back in confusion. The Germans next to them, severely pressed, began to waver, and for a time it seemed that the British, victorious ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty
... so much drinking of this fluid. Ply him hard as you will, through the live-long polar night, a wise man can not be made drunk. Though, toward sunrise, his body may reel, it will reel round its center; and though he make many tacks in going home, he reaches it at last; while scores of over-plied fools are foundering by the way. My lord, when wild with much thought, 'tis to wine I fly, to sober me; its magic fumes breathe over me like the Indian summer, which steeps all nature in repose. To me, wine is no vulgar fire, no fosterer of base passions; my heart, ever open, is opened still ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... time of June, crowding years in one brief moon, when all things I heard or saw, me, their master, waited for. I was rich in flowers and trees, humming-birds and honey-bees; for my sport the squirrel played; plied the snouted mole his spade; for my taste the blackberry cone purpled over hedge and stone; laughed the brook for my delight through the day and through the night, whispering at the garden wall, talked with me from fall to fall; mine the sand-rimmed pickerel pond; ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... by an expectant multitude at about 3 o'clock on Monday afternoon; the balconies were filled with ladies; all the windows were pasted with paper to neutralize the expected concussion, while cake and newspaper vendors and marchands de coco plied a busy trade, and elbowed their way about among the people down below. Three ropes had been fastened round the top of the column beneath the statue, communicating with a crazy-looking windlass and anchor placed in the centre of the road ...
— The Insurrection in Paris • An Englishman: Davy
... in, swam to her boat, tied the loose rope round his body, and then struck out for the shore, while the oars were plied as well as they could be by the weary hands that held them. His feet had just touched bottom when there was a loud cheer from the top of the hill that sloped down to the meadow. Two great wagons, with a pair of ...
— Little Tora, The Swedish Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Mrs. Woods Baker
... while in the keeping of the executioner. It was not until Escovedo acquired his perilous knowledge of the debaucheries of Perez and the Princess of Eboli, and had avowed his still more perilous resolution of publishing their frailty in a quarter where detection was ruin, that Perez plied with inflexible diligence artifice and violence, poison and dagger—to satisfy, coincidently, himself and his sovereign. By a similar infusion of emotions, roused by later occurrences, the feelings of Philip towards Perez ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... who, under the rainbow, Was a-bird-catching with her duck below: When her with such a grievous trick they plied That she had almost been bethwacked by it. The bargain was, that, of that throatful, she Should of Proserpina have two eggs free; And if that she thereafter should be found, She to a hawthorn hill should be ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... admit that there were fewer grounds for remonstrating with the Great Disposer of events than usual at this season of the year. Every wheat field in the township presented an active spectacle throughout the day. The cradles were busily plied from early morn till nightfall, and the swaths of golden grain furnished heavy work for the rakers and binders. The commercial crisis of 1857 had made itself felt in the district, as well as in all other parts ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... Great Priest,[1] whom may ill betide! who set me back into my first sins; and how and wherefore, I will that thou hear from me. While I was that form of bone and flesh that my mother gave me, my works were not leonine, but of the fox. The wily practices, and the covert ways, I knew them all, and I so plied their art that to the earth's end the sound went forth. When I saw me arrived at that part of my age where every one ought to strike the sails and to coil up the ropes, what erst was pleasing to me then gave me pain, and I yielded me repentant and confessed. Alas me wretched! and ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... drew her away and silenced her with a voice of authority, while Helen and an assistant plied their restoratives. It was ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... one of those romances of her girlhood and be lost in some enchanting adventure. But suddenly Julien's voice giving some orders to old Simon would snatch her abruptly from her dreams, and she would take up her work again, saying: "That is all over," and a tear would fall on her hands as she plied the needle. ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... at afternoone we weyed, and departed from thence, the wether being meetly faire, and the winde at Eastsoutheast, and plied for the place where we left our cable and anker, and pur hawser: and as soone as we were at an anker, the foresaid Gabriel came aboord of vs, with 3 or foure more of their small boats, and brought ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, • Richard Hakluyt
... 1871-1872 there were 814 m. of road in Lower Burma, but the chief means of internal communication was by water. Steamers plied on the Irrawaddy as far as Thayetmyo. The vessels of the Irrawaddy Flotilla Company now ply to Bassein and to all points on the Irrawaddy as far north as Bhamo, and in the dry weather to Myitkyina, and also on the Chindwin as far north as Kindat, and to Homalin ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... two painters, like the accommodating gentlemen they were, were nothing loath to engage with him and having once tasted the excellent wines and fat capons and other good things galore, with which he plied them, stuck very close to him and ended by quartering themselves upon him, without awaiting overmuch invitation, still declaring that they would not do this for another. Presently, whenas it seemed to him time, the physician made the same request to Buffalmacco as he had made Bruno ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... hides, and peltries, constituted the objects of exportation, which the colony presented to commerce. A number of woodsmen, or coureurs de bois, from Canada, had followed the missionaries, who had been sent among the nations of Indians, between that province and Louisiana. These men plied within a circle, of a radius of several hundred miles, of which the father's chapel was the centre, in search of furs, peltries, and hides. When they deemed they had gathered a sufficient quantity ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... that he was sent by the king, did not dare to disobey him, but purchased all that was necessary, and invited the fool. Emelian having promised to come, the officer expected him with great joy; and the fool coming the next day, they plied him so hard with drink that Emelian lay down and fell dead asleep. The officer, seeing that he was asleep, immediately ordered his kabitka to be got ready, and to draw up to the door, and when it drew up they placed the fool in it. After that the officer got into the ...
— Emelian the Fool - a tale • Thomas J. Wise
... mustang was leading the band; but as I halted for a shot, he turned inward, and, the mares intervening, cut off my opportunity. But the warning shot had reached every rider on the circle, and as I plied rowel and quirt to turn the band, Tio Tiburcio cut in before me and headed them backward. As the band whirled away from us the stallion forged to the front and, by biting and a free use of his heels, attempted to turn the manada on their former course. But it mattered ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... tiring-room close by The great outer gallery, With his holy vestments dight, Stood the new Pope, Theocrite; And all his past career Came back upon him clear, Since when, a boy, he plied his trade, Till on ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson
... on they pulled, the hard-handed fishermen, now flushed and moist with rowing. Again the ice was visible, but dimly, in his misty drapery. There was no time to be lost. Now, or not at all. And so C. began. For half an hour, pausing occasionally for passing flocks of fog, he plied the brush with a rapidity not usual, and under disadvantages that would have mastered a less experienced hand. We were getting close down upon the berg, and in fearfully rough water. In their curiosity to catch glimpses of the advancing sketch, the men pulled with little regularity, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... than 100 Maoris were found, but these showed the effects not only of Tamihana's instruction, but also of Wesleyan teachers from the south. The melancholy result was the division of the pa into two sections, who plied the bishop with questions on denominational distinctions. The same uncomfortable state of things was found in almost every village as far as Stewart Island, and detracted much from the pleasure of the ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas
... in reality perished? That was the question which was to be answered, but in order to do so, it was necessary for Deerfoot to gain all the information he could from Lone Bear, who, in fact, was the only one that could give it. He therefore plied him with questions, until nothing more was left to tell. His revelation ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... so that I was certain, if there was any such thing as a ship, they must needs see it. And no doubt they did; for as soon as ever my fire blazed up, I heard another gun, and after that several others, all from the same quarter. I plied my fire all night long, till daybreak: and when it was broad day, and the air cleared up, I saw something at a great distance at sea, full east of the island, whether a sail or a hull I could not distinguish ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... the hut together, and Lathrop rekindled the fire. The two men sat over it smoking. Blaydes plied his companion with eager questions, to which Lathrop returned the scantiest answers. At last he ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... accident such as might serve to dedicate the day to the service of the owners of the Villingen. It was early and sudden; but, save in these respects, it had no character of the unusual. The men who plied the brooms and carried the buckets were not shocked or startled by it so much as stimulated; it thrust under their noses the always imminent danger of failing to satisfy the mate's ideal of seaman-like efficiency. They woke to a fresher energy, a more ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... to surrender. Moolraj, with perfect sang froid, rammed the letter down one of the longest guns, and fired it at the British. During the following night a distinct breach was effected in the Delhi gate of the city, and the next day another at the Bohan gate. The fire of the besiegers was plied hotly for the two following days and nights, the city blazing like a hell, amidst the crash of falling buildings, and the outcry of wounded women and children. On the 81st the Sikhs made a sortie from the south-west gate against ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... Thereupon, seeing me all alone on the sea-shore, the knights marvelled with exceeding marvel; then the Prince detached one of his captains to ascertain my history and acquaint him there-with; but albeit the officer plied me with questions I answered him not a word and shed a flood of tears in the deepest silence. So noting the waifage on the sand they thought to themselves, "Perchance some vessel hath been wrecked upon this shore and its planks and timber have been cast upon the land, and doubtless this lady was ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... blustering; and still Phips lay quiet, waiting on the winds and the waves. A small vessel, with sixty men on board, under Captain Ephraim Savage, ran in towards the shore of Beauport to examine the landing, and stuck fast in the mud. The Canadians plied her with bullets, and brought a cannon to bear on her. They might have waded out and boarded her, but Savage and his men kept up so hot a fire that they forbore the attempt; and, when the ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... ask: "Is he really going to die very soon?" but the words stuck in her throat, and she plied Dubova with fatuous ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... day out, or sun or rain, Or sallow leaf, or summer grain, Beneath a wintry morning moon Or through red smouldering afternoon, With simple joy, with careful pride, He plies the craft he long has plied: To shape the stave, to set the sting, To fit the shaft with irised wing; And farers by may hear him sing, For still his door is wide: "Laugh and sigh, live and die,— The world swings round; I know not, I, If north or south mine ...
— Ride to the Lady • Helen Gray Cone
... can imagine that my companions and I were most eager to see more of them. During the entire next day not one of "les belles sauvages" was visible. It was next to impossible to make inquiries, but Swank, the irrepressible, resolved to try and plied Baahaabaa with questions in French, English, German and beche-de-mer, which only resulted in loud laughter on the part of our host. Swank next tried pantomime, using the French gesture for beauty, a circular motion of the hands about his face accompanied by sickening smiles. Baahaabaa watched him ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock
... meanwhile axe and lever Have manfully been plied, And now the bridge hangs tottering Above the boiling tide. "Come back, come back, Horatius!" Loud cried the Fathers all. "Back, Lartius! back, Herminius! Back, ere ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... that the time thus won by this devoted girl was enough to gain the end for which she strove; and Father Peters plied the ear of King James so importunately that at length the order was signed for Sir ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... rode at full gallop toward the spot. We followed at a more moderate pace, and soon saw the bull lying dead on the side of the hill. The Indians were gathered around him, and several knives were already at work. These little instruments were plied with such wonderful address that the twisted sinews were cut apart, the ponderous bones fell asunder as if by magic, and in a moment the vast carcass was reduced to a heap of bloody ruins. The surrounding group of savages offered no very attractive spectacle to a civilized eye. Some were cracking ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... to the prison well satisfied with his day's work. The labour, hard though it was, was an absolute pleasure to him. There was, moreover, nothing degrading in it, and while the overseers had plied their whips freely on the backs of many of his companions, he had not only escaped, but had, he felt, succeeded in pleasing his masters. The next morning when the gangs were drawn up in the yard before starting for work, ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... days I plied my trade. A man has many coats and all may fit him. The one that I wore in those days showed the bells and ribands of the harlequin, but there was chain armor underneath. I counted my results as ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... concentrated fire the great barrier and its defenders. The clansmen, recognising the frustration of their devices, deserted the position in its rear, and rushed tumultuously away to crags and sungahs where knife and jezail might still be plied. The centre column then advanced unmolested to the deserted barricade, through which the sappers soon cleared a thoroughfare. The guns swept with shrapnel the hill-sides in front, the flanking detachments pushed steadily further and yet further forward, chasing and slaying ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... am I; the thing that can say "I" (das Wesen das sich ICH nennt)? The world, with its loud trafficking, retires into the distance; and, through the paper-hangings, and stone-walls, and thick-plied tissues of Commerce and Polity, and all the living and lifeless integuments (of Society and a Body), wherewith your Existence sits surrounded,—the sight reaches forth into the void Deep, and you are alone with the Universe, and silently ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... he found Mr. Morgan and one of his southern friends talking busily with the slave. The woman appeared frightened and undecided, as is often the case, under such circumstances. Those who wished her to return to the South plied her with fair promises. They represented abolitionists as a set of kidnappers, who seized colored strangers under friendly pretences, and nobody could tell what became of them afterward. It was urged that her condition would be most miserable with the "free niggers" of ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... pathos of the scene, Constance plied her dainty needle, and in a sweet low voice talked with a young girl (Gertrude Earnest) who sat ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... never enforced.[473] In the Carolinas, although the Lords Proprietors wrote urging the governors to take every care that no pirates were entertained in the colony, the Act was not passed until November 1685.[474] There were few, if any, convictions, and the freebooters plied their trade with the same security as before. Toward the end of 1686 three galleys from St. Augustine landed about 150 men, Spaniards, Indians and mulattos, a few leagues below Charleston, and laid waste several plantations, including that of Governor Moreton. The enemy pushed ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring
... them that I would keep the young ladies company; they were looking at some pictures, I explained. I lost no time, and shewed them some extremely interesting sights. These stolen sweets have a wonderful charm. When we were to some extent satisfied, we went back, and I plied the punch-ladle more and more freely. Helen praised the pictures to her mother, and asked her to come and look ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... a peasant, who owned a bit of land and plied the trade of itinerant butcher, serving his customers from a cart, was a brother of Henriette's and Maurice's mother. He lived at Remilly, in a house perched upon a high hill, ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... and then applauded with cries such as I had never imagined. I wept copiously all the time. I was so moved that I believe if the Emperor had been present, I should have flung my arms about his neck, to beg for pardon afterwards at his feet. After this I supped out: every one plied me with questions. I knew the whole bulletin by heart, and kept repeating it; and was glad to be able to tell the news to so many people, to repeat those simple impressive words, with a feeling of owning ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... of her husband's face. I also was absorbed in the man and in his speech. I thought of the long years he had lived in communion with nature in that lonely but lovely region. The story of his life was familiar to me, and I sat as if under the influence of a spell. Soon he turned and plied me with questions about the prominent men in Paris whom I had recently seen and heard in the Chamber of Deputies. "How did Guizot bear himself? What part was De Tocqueville taking in the fray? Had I noticed George Lafayette especially?" ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... from the firmest grasp recede, Like airy forms, with tantalizing speed. O mortals! ere the vital powers decay, Or palsied eld obscures the mental ray, Raise your affections to the things above, Which time or fickle chance can never move. Had you but seen what I despair to sing, How fast his courser plied the flaming wing With unremitted speed, the soaring mind Had left his low terrestrial cares behind. But what an awful change of earth and sky All in a moment pass'd before my eye! Now rigid winter stretch'd her brumal reign With frown Gorgonean over land and main; ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... ignored, and, by command of the King, was laid before the Council for consideration. This led to further discussion, for Las Casas was invited to respond to the counter proposals, which he did with even more than his usual eloquence. A special meeting was called, before which Las Casas was plied with questions and objections to his plans; but if his enemies thought to find him lacking in ready response, they were sadly deceived, for the promptness with which he disposed of every objection, the clearness with ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... last effect one great release in his condition. He broke the oar he had plied so long, and he scuttled and sank the galley. He prevented the gradual retirement of an old conventional business from him, by taking the initiative and retiring from it. With enough to live on (though, after all, with not too much), he obliterated the firm of Barbox Brothers from the pages of ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... of the orderly officer; and Heideck the while plied the brave Morar Gopal afresh with questions as to the circumstances connected ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... but since they saw only a weary, tattered boy they lost their fears. They invited him indoors, and their voices were kindly. Nodding with exhaustion, he was given a stool to sit on and a bowl of coarse porridge was put into his hands. They plied him with questions, but he could ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... viands, and flasks were soon arranged in very tempting order—so tempting, indeed, that the squire, notwithstanding his assertion, that his appetite had been taken away, fell to work with his customary vigour, and plied a flask of excellent Bordeaux so incessantly, that another had to be placed before him. Sherborne did equal justice to the good cheer, and Richard not only forced himself to eat, but to the squire's great surprise swallowed more than one deep draught ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... paraphernalia of the establishment, had become intolerable; who had risen up in blind resistance, and had declared, with passionate anger, that whatever was the truth, all this was falsehood. The bishops had not been idle; they had plied their busy tasks with stake and prison, and victim after victim had been executed with more than necessary cruelty. But it was all in vain: punishment only multiplied offenders, and "the reek" of the martyrs, as was said when Patrick Hamilton was ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... in the bulky sheathings of stiff, many-plied fabric, turned as one and peered through their quartzite face shields to where the navigator's bulging eyes ...
— Hawk Carse • Anthony Gilmore
... if spellbound, while this unlovely pair, moving round the chapel close to each other, appeared to perform the duty of sweeping it, like menials; but as they used only one hand, the floor was not much benefited by the exercise, which they plied with such oddity of gestures and manner as befitted their bizarre and fantastic appearance. When they approached near to the knight in the course of their occupation, they ceased to use their brooms; and placing themselves side by side, ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... Iroquois, who had on more than one occasion taken terrible revenge on the enemies of his people. Daulac, now in command of sixty men, confidently awaited the Iroquois. In the meantime axe and saw and shovel were plied to erect a second row of palisades and to fill the space between with earth to the height of a man's breast. Scouts went out and discovered the encampment of the Iroquois, and at last brought the news that two canoes were running the rapids. Daulac hurriedly ...
— The Jesuit Missions: - A Chronicle of the Cross in the Wilderness • Thomas Guthrie Marquis
... continued and the acquaintanceship grew as man and boy plied back and forth on their mile-long furrow. At length it occurred to Grant that he should send Wilson home; the boy's long absence might be occasioning some uneasiness. They stopped at the end of the field and carefully removed teddy from his place of prestige, but just at that moment ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... yells. Again and again we fired, and rarely missed; but their numbers were so great, that little impression was made on them. They found, however, as they got higher up, their difficulties increased. Our Indians plied them rapidly with arrows, and at intervals tumbled down the stones on their heads, and we continued loading and firing without cessation. We could almost reach them with our spears; and so crowded together were they, that they impeded ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... was sharp and sudden. Ere night fell upon the city the dreadful garrote—the strangling stick and cord—plied by the boy executioners had done its dreadful work, and the six offending councillors lay dead in the tinguez, by the order of the fierce boy whom they had offended. And only when the last gray head had fallen ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... behold! I have heard of a smuggler that was chased a hundred times by his Majesty's cutters, in the chops of the Channel, and which always had a fog handy to run into, but out of which no man could truly say he ever saw her come again! This skiff may have plied between the land and that Guernseyman, for any thing I know to the contrary; but it is not a boat I wish to pull ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... to-day—I mean little in the way of literary work, for, as to positive work, I have been writing letters about Chancery business till I am sick of it. There was a long hearing, and while Jeffrey exerted his eloquence in the Inner House, I plied my eloquence de billet in the Library. So, on the whole, I am no bad boy. Besides, the day ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... in mind he decided to cause a little excitement in Wall Street. For some days he stealthily watched the stock market and plied his friends with questions about values. Constant reading and observation finally convinced him that Lumber and Fuel Common was the one stock in which he could safely plunge. Casting aside all apprehension, so far as Swearengen Jones was concerned, he prepared for what was to be ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon
... No one plied the paddles; they had impelled her out of sight of the sapucaya, now shrouded in the thick fog; but, as it was useless paddling any farther, all hands had desisted, and were now resting upon their oars. At this moment it was perceived that the galatea was in motion. The ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... Austria to frustrate Russia's plans with respect to Constantinople. Thanks to this entente cordiale between the two countries, enterprising English capitalists and engineers were allowed to put into operation the first line of steamboats that plied the waters of the Danube. Among other minor events of interest to Englishmen during this year, may be mentioned the first public appearance of Fanny Kemble, the actress, and the earliest boat race between student crews from the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... to Kaviri the canoes had been moving steadily up-river toward the chief's village. Kaviri's warriors plied the paddles in the three canoes, casting sidelong, terrified glances at their hideous passengers. Three of the apes of Akut had been killed in the encounter, but there were, with Akut, eight of the frightful beasts remaining, and there ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... and her low-spoken "I don't know" sounded like a wail of despair. Did she know anything, Guy wondered, and feeling some curiosity now to ascertain that fact, he plied her with questions philosophical, questions algebraical, and questions geometrical, until in an agony of distress Maddy raised her hands deprecatingly, as if she would ward off any similar questions, and ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes
... constantly urged on by the guide or person in command, and never cease paddling, unless during the few moments required to exchange seats, or while they take their hasty meals ashore. They are liberally plied with grog, well paid, and well fed, and seldom quit the service until it is hinted to them that the duty is become too hard for them. A light canoe-man considers it quite a degradation to be ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean
... more saw the poor doctor seated beside the young lady, while the postillions plied whip and spur with their best energy; and the road flew beneath them. Meanwhile the delay caused by this short dialogue, enabled Mrs. Fitz.'s slower conveyance to come up with the pursuit, and her chaise had just turned the angle of the road as she caught a glimpse of a ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... a collar-button that plied as many trades as Figaro, combining the functions of cravat-holder, stud, and scarf-pin. Not being successful in selling me one of these, he brought forward something ”without which,” he assured me, “no gentleman’s wardrobe was complete”! It proved to be an insidious arrangement ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... was hardly a boat of any size that plied up and down the Mississippi and its tributaries that did not count among its travelers or passengers some peddler with his pack. For the most part, his stock in trade consisted of cheap jewelry, gilded sleeve-buttons, ...
— Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi • George H. Devol
... Pole plied the Southern Cross. One night when she was about two hundred miles at sea off the mouth of the Amazon, the boys, as it was one of the soft tropical nights peculiar to those regions, were all grouped ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... Leopold plied his oars with all the vigor of a manly frame, intent upon reaching the little bay, where the high rocks would shelter his craft from the fury of the storm. Then a breeze of wind came and he resumed his place at the tiller. He had almost reached ...
— The Coming Wave - The Hidden Treasure of High Rock • Oliver Optic
... nevertheless, those titles upon themselves for the nonce; and were all, for the same reason, violently smitten with Master Poinsinet's person. One of them, the lady of the house, was especially tender; and, seating him by her side at supper, so plied him with smiles, ogles, and champagne, that our little hero grew crazed with ecstasy, and wild with love. In the midst of his happiness, a cruel knock was heard below, accompanied by quick loud talking, swearing, and ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... facile resource in those days for getting rid of the turbulent and the troublesome. John Porteous went into foreign service; he entered the corps known as the Scotch-Dutch, in the pay of the States of Holland, and plied the ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... spur of the moment she confessed to a previous acquaintance with Mr. Dowson; and Eva thereupon plied her with questions as to ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... was a rackety, noisome trading-ship that plied along the coast. On board were already some rowers of various races, accustomed to the work, but the bulk of the labor was to be done by the new men. It was killing toil. Fed on black beans and coarse ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... very queer at first, especially as we were young hands, and had never been engaged in such an awful scene before. But a few rounds presently brought us all to rights again, and then, with heads bound up, and stripped to the buff, we plied ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... sturdy frame which enables women to bear hard work. In the first three years of their married life Sauviat continued to do some peddling, and his wife accompanied him, carrying iron or lead on her back, and leading the miserable horse and cart full of crockery with which her husband plied a disguised usury. Dark-skinned, high-colored, enjoying robust health, and showing when she laughed a brilliant set of teeth, white, long, and broad as almonds, Madame Sauviat had the hips and bosom of a woman made by Nature expressly ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... upon the curbstone, Jonathan Tinker, being plied with a few leading questions, told in hints and scraps the story of his hard life, which was at present that of a second mate, and had been that of a cabin- boy and of a seaman before the mast. The second mate's place he held to be ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... launch plied lay inside a seawall inclosing a small placid rectangle with a walk all about and iron benches. Steps at the back, guarded by two great Pompeian sandstone urns, and pressed by a luxuriant growth, led up to the villa. Gheta looked curiously about as she stepped from the launch and went forward ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... symptoms continued increasing very fast, notwithstanding several attempts made by a very judicious apothecary to relieve her. The more regular practitioner failing, she had recourse to a quack, who I believe plied her very powerfully with Daphne laureola, or some drastic purge of that kind. I found her greatly reduced in strength, her belly and lower extremities swollen to an amazing size, her urine small in quantity, ...
— An Account of the Foxglove and some of its Medical Uses - With Practical Remarks on Dropsy and Other Diseases • William Withering
... that I was tired and hungry; in fact, I forgot everything that was not directly connected with the excitement of lion-hunting. Even the old savage at my feet grinned when he saw how keen I was about it. I plied him with questions—were they both lions or lionesses? had they manes? how far away were they? and so on. Naturally, to the last question he was bound to answer "M'bali kidogo." Of course they were not far away; nothing ever is to ...
— The Man-eaters of Tsavo and Other East African Adventures • J. H. Patterson
... looking, as it lay motionless in the river, like a white table chained in the water with its legs in the air. The chain along which it moved plunged into the shallows beside him, and he could see it descending till he lost it in the dusky pool across which the ferry plied. To the north, Loch Ken ran in glistening levels and island-studded reaches to the ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... attention from the instructor, and was then put through sundry grammatical puzzles, among which he floundered until stopped by the word, "Sufficient.'' Soon afterward another was called up who rattled off glibly a translation without one particle of literary merit, and was then plied with the usual grammatical questions. Being asked to "synopsize'' the Greek verb, he went through the various moods and tenses, in all sorts of ways and in all possible combinations, his tongue rattling like the clapper of a mill. When he sat down my ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... majority, it was plain to see, hailed from the city. No steam carousel shrieked, no ballyhoo blared, no steam pianos shrieked, no barker barked. Upon the piers, stretching out into the surf, bands played soothingly softened airs and along the water front, sand-artists and so-called minstrel singers plied their arts. Some of the visitors fished—without catching anything—and some listened to the music and some strolled aimlessly or sat stolidly upon benches enjoying the sea air. To an American, accustomed at such places to din and tumult and rushing crowds and dangerous devices for taking one's ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... grace said, the dinner served, and more than two hours devoted to its consumption. It was now ten o'clock, and Lord Palmerston, who was expected to speak and reputed to be rarely gifted with fluency, was obliged to leave for the Queen's Concert. Up to this time, no man had been plied with more than a dozen kinds of wine, each (I presume) very good, but altogether (I should suppose) calculated to remind the drinker of his head on rising in the morning. The cloth was now removed and after-grace sung by a choir, for even with two ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... fault in an officer upon guard). Cassio for a time resisted, but he could not long hold out against the honest freedom which Iago knew how to put on, but kept swallowing glass after glass (as Iago still plied him with drink and encouraging songs), and Cassio's tongue ran over in praise of the Lady Desdemona, whom he again and again toasted, affirming that she was a most exquisite lady. Until at last the enemy which he put into his mouth stole away his brains; and upon some provocation ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... but a subordinate element in the internal commerce. Down the Mississippi floated a multitude of heavily freighted craft: lumber rafts from the Allegheny, the old-time arks, with cattle, flour, and bacon, hay-boats, keel-boats, and skiffs, all mingled with the steamboats which plied the western waters. [Footnote: Flint, Recollections of the Last Ten Years, 101-110; E. S. Thomas, Reminiscences, I., 290-293; Hall, Statistics of the West (1836), 236; Howells, Life in Ohio, 85; Schultz, ...
— Rise of the New West, 1819-1829 - Volume 14 in the series American Nation: A History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... Prescott, who had a great deal to say. The elder woman, for all her gentleness and apparent timidity, had a bold spirit that stood in no awe of the high and mighty. She was full of curiosity about the war and plied her ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... Wimple waited in her shabby little shop and plied her needle for hire. Her lover was a handsome fellow, with a bright, frank face, and a vigorous, agile, and graceful form; there was more than common intellect in his clear, broad brow, overhung with close clusters of brown country curls; taste was on ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... mind, but was indeed thankful to get any dinner at all. Once resolved on the move, he was in a fever to be off; it was not long before we were in the streets, bound for the Hotel St. Quentin. He said no more of Monsieur as we walked, but plied me with questions about Mlle. de Montluc—not only as to every word she said, but as to every turn of her head and flicker of her eyelids; and he called me a dull oaf when I could not answer. But as we entered the Quartier Marais he fell silent, more Friday-faced than ever his lady looked. ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... nightfall, strong, powerful, happy, like hammers satisfied. But just as the great bell of a cathedral resounds upon feast days above the jingling of the other bells, so Phillip's hammer, dominating the noise of the others, clanged second after second with a deafening uproar. And he, his eye on fire, plied his trade vigorously, erect ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... apostles to the birth of this man, brings us back to 1772. There is good Dr. Sales, who was born in 1770. Suppose that he should say that steamboats came from England at the time that the Hudson river was discovered, and that they had plied there ever since? ...
— Bertha and Her Baptism • Nehemiah Adams
... interesting to me. The book brought me many friends. One story, at any rate, elicited the gracious laughter of Queen Victoria. A pauper who had known better days wrote to thank me for enlivening the monotony of a workhouse infirmary. Literary clerks plied me with questions about the sources of my quotations. A Scotch doctor demurred to the prayer—"Water that spark"—on the ground that the water would put the spark out. Elderly clergymen in country parsonages revived the rollicking memories of their undergraduate days, and sent me academic quips ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... his bride and love of his work made him strong and skillful, and, so impatient was he to see the completion of the ship, that he summoned his workmen and set about his noble task without an instant's delay. Soon the sound of axes and mallets plied by sturdy arms was heard on all sides of the ship-yard. Before the shadows of evening fell, the oaken keel of a noble ship was lying ready stretched along the blocks. The work was well begun and all seemed to promise fair for ...
— The Children's Longfellow - Told in Prose • Doris Hayman
... a lady's face at the window of the sedan, turned hastily round, plied the knocker with all his might and main, and called frantically upon the chairman to take the ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... staying. Lyon had not observed in the circles in which he visited any marked abstention from comment on the singularities of their members. It interfered with his progress that the Colonel hunted all day, while he plied his brushes and chatted with Sir David; but a Sunday intervened and that partly made it up. Mrs. Capadose fortunately did not hunt, and when his work was over she was not inaccessible. He took a couple of longish walks with her (she was ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... of lightness and one might almost say volubility. In these etudes his wonderful stiff arm octave playing, in the real old-fashioned manner, showed itself, for in every run in single notes he introduced octaves. The applause after this was so great and the flappers at the pianist's side plied him so vigorously that the Gospadin actually began playing the Hexameron, that remarkably difficult and old set of variations on the march in Puritani, by ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... our fathers was their emphasis of the principle of self-care and self-culture. Finding that he who first made the most of himself was best fitted to make something of others, the teachers of yesterday unceasingly plied men with motives of personal responsibility. Influenced by the former generation, our age has organized the principle of individualism into its home, its school, its market-place and forum. By reason of the increase in gold, ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... cow trough yestiddy or thar wouldn't have been an egg left in this house. That's right, turn right in an' eat hearty—don't mince with me." Big Abel, cowed by her energetic manner, seated himself upon the door step, and for a half-hour the woman ceaselessly plied them with hot biscuits and coffee made ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... squalor of most Siberian villages was striking. Our host's sitting-room contained even palms and flowers, artificial, of course, but cheerful to the eye. He himself waited on us during the meal, and continually plied his guests with champagne and other rare vintages, for the Skopt, although a miser at heart, is fond of displaying his wealth. Avarice is the characteristic of these people, although they are kind to their own poor. We visited an institution maintained solely by the village for ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt |
