"Rafter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... dreaded presence. Again his arrears of rent were demanded, and once more he feebly protested that he could not discharge them. Thereon Ramani Babu ordered him to be hung up. Forthwith, a dozen eager hands were laid on him, a rope was passed under his armpits, and the free end thrown over a rafter of the office. By this means he was hauled from the ground and swung suspended, a butt of sarcasm and abuse for Ramani Babu's myrmidons. After enduring this humiliation for an hour or so, he was let down and a final demand made on him for ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... night in a ruined town With a rafter for a bed? With horses stamping underneath In the morning when they are fed? Have you heard the crump-crump whistle? Do you know the dud shell's grunt? Have you played rat in a dugout?— Then you have ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... those others for the predominance of the primal instinct, the sacred passion for the inviolate hearth? Not so much they yearned for the man as for the roof-tree, whose roots are twined about the heart-strings of the natural woman, the spreading rafter-branches of which shelter ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... on us, close without! Shut tight the shelter where we lie! With hideous din the monster rout, Dragon and vampire, fill the sky! The loosened rafter overhead Trembles and bends like quivering reed; Shakes the old door with shuddering dread, As from its rusty hinge 'twould fly! Wild cries of hell! voices that howl and shriek! The horrid troop before the tempest tossed— O Heaven!—descends my lowly ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... tree-builders sometimes get upon the ground or into a tussock of grass. The song sparrow, which is a ground builder, has been known to build in the knothole of a fence rail; and a chimney swallow once got tired of soot and smoke, and fastened its nest on a rafter in a hay barn. A friend tells me of a pair of barn swallows which, taking a fanciful turn, saddled their nest in the loop of a rope that was pendent from a peg in the peak, and liked it so well that they repeated the experiment next year. I have known the social sparrow, or "hairbird," ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... door and portal, And all is hush'd and still; O'er ruin'd wall and rafter I clamber as ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... been raised from the ground, new sills placed under it, and while every part—scantling, rafter, joist, crossbeam, lath and weatherboard—of the original house has been retained, it has been put in such order that it is no longer ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... sword dropped from its hook on a rafter, Jane danced in glee and declared "a ghost did it," although Dozia insisted she had cut a piece of cord on that very hook. Finally Jane was "canned," as Dozia described the state of being inside of tin things, and an ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... into the air, he flashed out his rapier and made a pass at it. The ring rasped down the steel blade and tinkled against the hilt, fairly impaled. By a sharp motion of the wrist he shot it up to the ceiling again, where it struck a carved rafter and altered its course; but again, with a quick step forward, he got beneath it and received it on his sword-point. 'Surely there is some cavalier present who is as apt at the trick as I am,' he said, replacing the ring ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... while we did not, we let them choose the inn. They pulled up at what caused me a shudder. I thought, if this was the best inn, what must the worst be like! However, I bowed my head to fate in the form of a rafter lintel, and passed in. A dim light, which came in part from a hole in the floor, and in part from an ineffective lamp, revealed a lofty, grotto-like interior. Over the hole hung a sort of witches' caldron, swung ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... which the clerk of the kitchen, the pantlers, and the yeomen of the cellar and ewery, were hurrying to and fro. Above the screen was a gallery, occupied by the trumpeters and minstrels; and over all was a noble rafter roof. The tables were profusely spread, and glittered with silver dishes of extraordinary size and splendour, as well as with flagons and goblets of the same material, and rare design. The guests, all of whom were assembled, were outnumbered by the ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Mr. Hastings, having waited until they saw the last rafter of unfortunate Reilly's house and premises sink into a black mass of smoking ruins, turned their steps to the parsonage, which they had no sooner entered than they went immediately to Reilly's room, who was still there under concealment. Mr. Brown, however, went ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... determined that whatever he might require of me it should be done to the uttermost. And as I made this determination in my unfaltering heart, he picked me up and stood on an empty box that I should have bound on the morrow, and tied one end of me to a dark rafter; and the knot was carelessly tied, because his soul was reproaching him all the while continually and giving him no ease. Then he made the other end of me into a noose, but when the man's soul saw this it stopped reproaching the man, and cried ...
— A Dreamer's Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... Resolved thus, without delay she went, As her strong passion did her rashly guide, And those bright arms, down from the rafter hent, Within her closet did she closely hide; That might she do unseen, for she had sent The rest, on sleeveless errands from her side, And night her stealths brought to their wished end, Night, patroness of thieves, ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... troops of Diaz, while they themselves were supposed to be more of the same brand. Evidently they had been expected by Ramon's subterranean river, and in taking the boat they must have forestalled the real Con Divver, Jim Hickey, and Ted Rafter. Jack caught himself wondering how long it would take the latter to ride over the ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering
... roof above him, a rafter here and there was gaping open, and fiery monsters, with blood-red eyes, were peeping down at him and puffing clouds of blue smoke through the interstices. Thousands and thousands of voices were bickering and chattering with each other, ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... same look. There was the old store, too, looking exactly as it did when he went away, the sign a little more worn in the gilding. He seemed to smell the mingled odors of rum, salt-fish, and liquorice, with which every beam and rafter was permeated. And there was old Walsh going home drunk this minute! with a salt mackerel, as usual, for ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... thy nest every rafter Will rot, and thine eagle home Leave thee naked to laughter, When leaves fall and cold ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... this time," responded the journeyman. The old gentleman did not repeat his question; he held fast to the rafter on which he was leaning. "He was already on his way home," continued the journeyman. "I came with him as far as the gate. Then he sent me to the tinner's to see if the tin was ready at last. Joerg told me that he had ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... more of the heart of Christ! Take care, brother, how you speak of another's fault. Ere you know, you may be in the same or deeper condemnation. Very significantly does the Master say that the man that sees a mote in his brother's eye, usually has a rafter in his own eye! One of the two unpardonable sins of the ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... draw near and behold me Ye who pass by the way to your rest and your laughter, And are full of the hope of the dawn coming after; For the strong of the world have bought me and sold me And my house is all wasted from threshold to rafter. —Pass by me, and hearken, and think ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris
... high and nearly empty barn. A lantern is hung by a rope that lifts the bales of straw, to a long ladder leaning against a rafter. This gives all the light there is, save for a slender track of moonlight, slanting in from the end, where the two great doors are not quite closed. On a rude bench in front of a few remaining, stacked, square-cut bundles of last year's hay, sits TIBBY JARLAND, a bit of apple ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... too, and sat bolt upright in bed, not knowing what had awakened her, but trembling like a leaf with nervous fear. A terrific gust of wind roared around the corner, shaking the little brown house from rafter to foundation; the great elm trees tossed and groaned in sympathy, and the leafless vines over the porch beat a ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown
... hid his precious pill under a rafter, lest anyone should steal it, and then began the preparatory course ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... the night together Came down, and the wind came after, Bending the props of the pine-tree roof, And snapping many a rafter. ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... way down from the garret, it suddenly occurred to me that Eugene might have put the book there, and that he might come and look for it at any time. So I put it back on the black rafter where I had found it. Every time I could manage to go to the garret I looked to see whether it was still in its place, and I read it as much and as often as ever ...
— Marie Claire • Marguerite Audoux
... climbed from storey to storey it is doubtful if the children caught their leader's words at all. There were no echoes—the spaces were too vast for that—and they swung away from spar to spar, and from rafter to rafter, as easily as acrobats on huge trapezes. Jimbo and ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... of the ceiling follow the course of the great beams supporting the roof. Till it was resolved to construct this ceiling the beams were exposed, and the whole was open to the leads. Canon Stewart speaks of it as a "remarkable example of a trussed rafter roof of seven cants," and says that such a roof was sometimes called a compass roof. He thinks it might have taken the place of an original ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ely • W. D. Sweeting
... off. My porch was kept littered with twigs and weed-stalks for days, till finally the birds abandoned the undertaking. The next season a wiser or more experienced pair made the attempt again, and succeeded. They placed the nest against the rafter where it joins the plate; they used mud from the start to level up with and to hold the first twigs and straws, and had soon completed a firm, shapely structure. When the young were about ready to fly, it was interesting to note that there was apparently an older and a younger, as in most families. ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... taken the candle down from the rafter, and she went swiftly to the tiny window. She raised her hand, once, then pinched out the flame ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... the middle of the room. Backless benches were on both sides of every table. At the end, chairs were placed, the seats of honor for famous Bourgeois. British flags had been draped across windows and colored bunting hung from rafter to rafter. ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... through a half-mile lane, thick grown with bushes. Here, years before I was born, there had once lived a man by the name of Buck, who hanged himself in the garret one day, while his wife was away. It was said she came back just at dusk and found him hanging lifeless from a rafter in the garret. What became of her I never knew, but no one ever lived on the place afterward, and in time the farm and house reverted to the town for taxes. It also soon obtained the reputation of being haunted, and no one ever went near ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn
... After one of his defeats he was lying one night on a wretched bed in a rude hut, while debating in his own mind whether it were not best to enlist in a crusade, when his attention was directed to a spider on the rafters overhead. He saw that the little spinner was trying to swing from one rafter to another, so as to fix his thread across the space. Time and again it tried and failed. Admiring the perseverance of the creature, Bruce began to count the number of times he tried. One, two, three, four, five, six. It suddenly occurred to Bruce that this was just the number of times he had ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot
... rope was brought, Long Bill Haskell, Fat Olsen, and the craps-player, with much awkwardness and angry haste, got the slip-noose around the Indian's neck and rove the rope over a rafter. At the other end of the dangling thing a dozen men tailed on, ready ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... a pleasant mansion and a strong. A dry ditch was dug deep about it; but it was now choked with masonry, and bridged by a fallen rafter. The two farther walls still stood, the sun shining through their empty windows; but the remainder of the building had collapsed, and now lay in a great cairn of ruin, grimed with fire. Already in the interior a few plants were ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... up quickly and without making the least noise. Holding the lighted candle out before her, she stared at a rafter from which hung a human figure dressed in woman's clothes. She wheeled about, uttering a stifled gurgle. A sort of drunkenness came over her; she was seized with a terrible desire to dance. She raised one leg, and sank her teeth deep into the nails of her right hand. In her convulsions she had ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... was a little boy wouldn't say his pray'rs— An' when he went to bed at night, away up-stairs, His mammy heerd him holler, an' his daddy heerd him bawl, An' when they turn't the kivvers down, he wasn't there at all! An' they seeked him in the rafter-room, an' cubby hole, an' press, An' seeked him up the chimbly flue, an' ever'-wheres, I guess; But all they ever found was thist his pants an' roundabout! An' the Gobble-uns'll git you Ef ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... the voice of a spirit clamored aloud, "Ho! ho! Bishop Bruno, whither art thou travelling? But go thy ways, bishop Bruno, for thou shalt travel with me tonight." At night, while feasting with the emperor, a rafter fell on his head and killed him. Southey has a ballad called Bishop Bruno, but it deviates from the original legend given by Heywood in several particulars: It makes bishop Bruno hear the voice first on his ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... spoke when, fair and soft, The roof began to mount aloft; Aloft rose every beam and rafter; The heavy wall climbed slowly after. The chimney widened and grew higher, Became a steeple with a spire. The kettle to the top was hoist, And there stood fastened to a joist, But with the upside down, ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... one could work long there at the pace that was set, and not give out and forget himself and have a part of his hand chopped off. There were the "hoisters," as they were called, whose task it was to press the lever which lifted the dead cattle off the floor. They ran along upon a rafter, peering down through the damp and the steam; and as old Durham's architects had not built the killing room for the convenience of the hoisters, at every few feet they would have to stoop under a beam, say four feet above the one they ran on; which got them into the habit of stooping, so that ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... some time last night," went on Newt joyously. "From a rafter in Ed Higgins's livery stable. With a clothesline. Kicked a step-ladder out from under himself. Why, even Uncle Dad Simms has heard about it. Ed found him when he went out to—wait a second! I'm goin' your way. What's the rush? He's been dead six or eight hours. He can't escape. He's down in ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... beam and rafter and roof made into a home, humble and honest, and giving it all back again under the warm light of ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... woods, to the woods is the wizard gone; In his grotto the maiden sits alone. She gazes up with a weary smile At the rafter-hanging crocodile, The slowly swinging crocodile. Scorn has she of her master's gear, Cauldron, alembic, crystal sphere, Phial, philtre—"Fiddlededee For all such trumpery trash!" quo' she. "A soldier is the lad for me; Hey and hither, ...
— Fairies and Fusiliers • Robert Graves
... hearth about, Content to let the north-wind roar In baffled rage at pane and door, While the red logs before us beat The frost-line back with tropic heat; And ever, when a louder blast Shook beam and rafter as it passed, The merrier up its roaring draught The great throat of the chimney laughed, The house-dog on his paws outspread Laid to the fire his drowsy head, The cat's dark silhouette on the wall A couchant tiger's seemed to fall; And, for the winter fireside meet, Between the andirons' ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... in the chimney, for the night was cool. It filled the room with a gracious heat and with huge, comfortable shadows. Here and there on the wall a tin cup flashed back the radiance of the fire, the barrel of a gun glistened soberly along a rafter, and the long, wiry hair of an otter-skin in the corner sent out little needles of light. Upon the fire a pot was simmering, and a good savour came from it. A wind went lilting by outside the but in tune with the singing of the kettle. The ticking of a huge, old-fashioned repeating-watch ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... hall are song and laughter, The cheeks of Christmas glow red and jolly, And sprouting is every corbel[22] and rafter With the lightsome green of ivy and holly; Through the deep gulf[23] of the chimney wide 215 Wallows the Yule-log's[24] roaring tide; The broad flame-pennons droop and flap And belly and tug as a flag in the wind; Like a locust shrills the imprisoned sap, Hunted to death ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... Fates alone can tell. An old demi-peak saddle, capped and tipped with brass, some rusty bits, and stray stirrup-irons lay here and there upon the floor; while upon a species of clothes-rack, attached to a rafter, hung a tarnished suit of postillion's livery, cap, jacket, leathers, and jack-boots, all ready for use; and evidently from their arrangement supposed by the owner to be ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... terrible times, humanity is retrograding," murmured Capitan Basilio, thinking of the past. "The day after you left they found the senior sacristan dead, hanging from a rafter in his own house. Padre Salvi was greatly affected by his death and took possession of all his papers. Ah, yes, the old Sage, Tasio, also died and was buried ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... the corner by the door. Rifle and pack were both gone. He looked up at the rafter where his slab of bacon was always hung. ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... upper, outermost limbs of an apple tree. The Wood Pewee's nest is a frail, shallow excuse for a nest, resting securely on a horizontal limb of some well-grown tree. Then there is the Phoebe, that plasters its cup-shaped mass of nesting material with mud, thus securing it to a rafter or other projection beneath a bridge, outbuilding, or porch roof. Still farther away from the typical Flycatcher's {39} nest is that made by a perfectly regular member of the family, the Great-crested Flycatcher. The straw and other substances ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... let go their fliers, and most of them will take one on the short side over to-night for a superstition drop at the opening; and suppose 'Cam' has told him to take them all into camp and give her a rafter-scraper at the opening, where would old Friday, 13th, land on to-morrow's dope-sheets? Bring up the average, wouldn't it, for five years to come? I tell you, Ike, she's too deep for me this run, and I'm goin' to let her alone ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson
... cried the queen haughtily. "Procure me my crown." Suzanna looked about her. An old dried-up Christmas wreath hanging on a rafter attracted her attention. Quickly she procured it and held it out to Drusilla. "Here is your crown, Queen," she said. And then, her voice changing, she said: "You'd better let me put it on, Drusilla, it's liable to crumble if you're not careful. ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... his blood was not "i' the vein" for it; none was to be had. What then was to be done? He resolved to get rid of life by some process, and the next that occurred to him was hanging. In a solemn spirit he prepared a selvage, and suspended himself from the rafter of his workshop. But here another disappointment awaited him, he would not hang. Such was his want of gravity that his own weight proved insufficient to occasion his death by mere suspension. His third attempt was at drowning; but he was ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... quickly followed her advice, and no sooner were they concealed than the old giant Hymir came in. When his wife told him that visitors had come, he frowned so portentously, and flashed such a wrathful look towards their hiding-place, that the rafter split and the kettles fell with a crash, and, except the largest, were ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... of one house there was left standing only a breadth of front wall between the places where windows had been. It rose in a ragged column to the line of the roof-rafters—only, of course, there was neither roof nor rafter now. On the face of the column, as though done in a spirit of bitter irony, was posted a proclamation, signed by the burgomaster and the military commandant, calling on the vanished dwellers of this place to ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... not follow after Too close. I try to keep in sight, Dreading his frown and worse his laughter, I steal out of the wood to light; I see the swift shoot from the rafter By the window: ere I alight I wait and hear the starlings wheeze And nibble like ducks: I wait his flight. He goes: I follow: no release Until he ceases. Then I also ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... sheaves may gladden the heart of the husbandman. Here hospitality still holds good; every one who has but imbibed mother's milk is welcome. The bread-pantry, the wine-vat, and the store of sausages on the rafter,—lock and key are at the service of the traveller, and piles of food are set before him; contented, the sated guest sits, looking neither before him nor behind, dozing by the hearth in the kitchen. The warmest ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... and laughter, The cheeks of Christmas glow red and jolly, And sprouting is every corbel and rafter With lightsome green of ivy and holly; Through the deep gulf of the chimney wide Wallows the Yule-log's roaring tide; The broad flame-pennons droop and flap And belly and tug as a flag in the wind; ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... above it. I could hear my wife and children praying, although I could not see them. I did not pray. They were taken and I was left for some purpose, I suppose. My house finally landed up against the stone railway bridge. I was then pinned down to the floor by a heavy rafter or something. Somehow or other I was lifted from the floor and thrown almost out upon the bridge. Then some people got hold of me and pulled me out and took me over to a brickyard. My eyes and nose were full of cinders. After I reached the brickyard I vomited fully a pint of cinders which I had ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... spoke a bullet whistled through the door and struck a tin of condensed milk which hung by a string from the rafter. The bullet went right through and the milk oozed out ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... killed them all. Presently he soared off into the sky, and left them lying dead about the yard; whereon I wept in my dream till all my maids gathered round me, so piteously was I grieving because the eagle had killed my geese. Then he came back again, and perching on a projecting rafter spoke to me with human voice, and told me to leave off crying. 'Be of good courage,' he said, 'daughter of Icarius; this is no dream, but a vision of good omen that shall surely come to pass. The geese are the suitors, and I am no longer an eagle, but ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... only that I don't wish to disturb the wedding feast, or I'd take this rope here (takes hold of the rope on the straw) and throw it across that rafter there. Then I'd make a noose and stretch it out, and I'd climb on to that rafter and jump down with my head in the noose! That's what ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... sure, she cut Mrs. Sooty-back when they met; assumed an injured air, when some of her neighbors passed her; and said, "I told you so," a dozen times a day to her husband, who got so many curtain lectures that he took to sleeping on the highest rafter, pretending that the children's noise ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... is dominated by the ruins of a castle of the tenth or eleventh century, that was restored in the fifteenth, when a graceful turret was added. The keep is planted on a precipitous rock, and rises to the overhanging roof of chalk that is pierced with rafter- holes for the reception of roof beams, and with openings only to be reached by ladders leading to caves that served as storehouses. At the junction of the Beune with the Vezere, a little further down ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... that blew all day with solemn laughter From wide-mouthed chimney-places, And the strange noises between roof and rafter, The wainscot clamor, and ...
— Poems • William D. Howells
... night was cold, they seemed to have lighted it merely for the pleasure of burning furniture and pictures, that had been left behind by the Communal waggoners. They had already begun to pull down the right side of the house; a pickaxe was leaning against a loosened stone; the roof had fallen in, and a rafter was sticking out of one of the windows. The fire rose higher and higher; would it not be better that the flames should reach the house and consume it in an hour or two, than to see it being gradually pulled down, stone by stone, for many days ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... information, and said that she would take good care to stop up the road. As to Parsley, it was, moreover, impossible for her to escape, as she had laid a spell upon her, so that unless she had in her hand the three gall-nuts which were in a rafter in the kitchen it would be labour lost to attempt ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... Clever as Gum was, he was scarcely a match for two men, who, as noted horse-thieves, were experts in the use of the lasso, and in a short time the monkey was ignominiously driven from his perch on a rafter, tied up in Donald's pillow-case, and swung over the shoulder of one of the men. Then the robbers wished Donald a grim good-night, and marched off with their 'purse.' As they were going out of the door ...
— The Monkey That Would Not Kill • Henry Drummond
... hoisted a flag to rally round. You have been like some poor people I have read of in the late storm, buried under the ruins of your own edifice, but whether you were stifled or crushed, killed by a rafter or a brick, nobody can tell. You have died a death so ignoble that it has no name, and the ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury
... hears, like a far-away horn, As he lies on the straw by the snoring boy, The winding echo of "N-a-n-j-e-m-o-y." All day it follows, all night it whines, From the suck of waters, the moan of pines, And the tread of cavalry following after, The flash of flames on beam and rafter, The shot, the strangle, the crash, the swoon, Scarce break his trance or disturb the croon Of the meaningless notes on his lips which fasten, And the soldier hears, as he seeks to convoy The dying words of the dark assassin, ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... had finished his porridge, he was to go into the barn to thrash. He took one of the rafters from the roof and made a flail out of it, and when the roof was about to fall in, he took a big pine tree with branches and all and put it up instead of the rafter. So he went on thrashing the grain and the straw and the hay all together. This was doing more damage than good, for the corn and the chaff flew about together, and a cloud of dust arose over the ...
— Folk Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... "You must ask Bill," says Jack to the next blank, "I got it from him." And when Bill gets his paper back finally—which is often only after much bush grumbling, accusation, recrimination, and denial—he severely and carefully re-arranges theme pages, folds the paper, and sticks it away up over a rafter, or behind a post or batten, or under his pillow where it will safe. He wants that paper to send ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... Then he began to drag posts, pieces of rafter and other wreckage over to the cave. He laid the longest pieces sloping against the cave-mouth—he badly wanted his father to be within four walls,—covered them over and filled the gaps with bits of sail-cloth and anything else handy, and finished by shovelling ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... pack t' the sou'east. In the nor'west, too, was another floe. 'Twas there, in the mist, an' 'twas comin' down with the wind. It cotched the first of the gale; 'twas free t' move, too. 'Twould overhaul us soon enough. Ever see the ice rafter, sir? No? Well, 'tis no swift collison. 'Tis horrible an' slow. No shock at all: jus' slow pressure. The big pans rear. They break—an' tumble back. Fields—acres big—slip one atop o' the other. Hummocks are crunched t' slush. The big bergs topple over. It always makes me think o' hell, somehow—the ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... meet a builder! Had this good house, in frame or fixture, Been tempered by the least admixture Of that discreditable shoddy, Should we to-day compound our toddy, Or gaily marry song and laughter Below its sempiternal rafter? Not so!' ...
— Moral Emblems • Robert Louis Stevenson
... my life, my awl to me!" He cried, his flame addressing— "If I 'adze such a love as yours, I'd ask no other blessing!" "I am rejoist to hear you speak," The maiden said with laughter— "For tho' I hammer guileless girl, It's plane what you are rafter. Now if file love you just a bit, What further can you ax me? Can—will you be content with that, Or will you further tacks me?" He looked handsaw her words were square— "No rival can displace me— Yes, one more favor I implore, And that is, dear ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 1, January 5, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... wreathed smoke and dim hot fume of the consuming fire told him of certain death; unable to retreat,—for the insidious flame had already destroyed the door which Roupall had failed to move, and danced, like a fiend at play with destruction, from rafter to rafter, and beam to beam, of ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... thought to fight. But shortly for to speaken of this thing, With Creon, which that was of Thebes king, He fought, and slew him manly as a knight In plain bataille, and put his folk to flight: And by assault he won the city after, And rent adown both wall, and spar, and rafter; And to the ladies he restored again The bodies of their husbands that were slain, To do obsequies, as was then the ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... much as a hundred times; well, I was most all the time at it, because it was about the only way to put in the time. But this time I found something at last; I found an old rusty wood-saw without any handle; it was laid in between a rafter and the clapboards of the roof. I greased it up and went to work. There was an old horse-blanket nailed against the logs at the far end of the cabin behind the table, to keep the wind from blowing through the chinks and putting ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... a cry that was a wail of parenthood, as we all sank to the ground just as the terrible black monster tore the roof from the Little House and hurled it toward us across the street. I saw a huge rafter hurtle through the air and strike down Mark Morgan as he started toward the steps of the schoolhouse, and by not a half inch did it miss drunken, useless Mike Burns as it fell beside him. Then I covered my eyes as the ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... canvas daubs, with which strolling showmen adorn their booths, hangs from a rafter, no doubt to prevent its being spoilt by too long rolling up. It bore ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... have her nest spoiled whenever that implement was wanted: and, what is stranger still, another bird of the same species built its nest on the wings and body of an owl that happened by accident to hang dead and dry from the rafter of a barn. This owl, with the nest on its wings, and with eggs in the nest, was brought as a curiosity worthy the most elegant private museum in Great Britain. The owner, struck with the oddity of the sight, furnished the bringer with a large shell, or conch, desiring him to fix it just where the ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... disbelieve entirely in the principle of private rights in real estate. They will eat their way through the beams of your house till there is only a slender core of solid wood left to support the entire burden. I have taken down a rafter in my own house in Jamaica, originally 18 inches thick each way, with a sound circular centre of no more than 6 inches in diameter, upon which all the weight necessarily fell. With the material extracted from the wooden ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... enemy's fire, we gasped for breath; never have I been so choked and so distressed, and presently, the air clearing a little, a huge rent in the roof was disclosed. On the ground behind lay piles upon piles of rubbish and broken tiles, and perilously near our heads a huge rafter sagged downwards, half split in two. We were debating how long we could stand under such circumstances, when a second shock shook the building, and once more we were deluged with dust and dirt. This time the hanging rafter was dislodged and fell sullenly with a heavy crash to the ground; ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... stockade gate, and went straight to the porch; all the woodwork of which was carved and gaily painted, and so were eaves and rafter ...
— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler
... to the posts in rear, and then another cross-plate, or girt, from each one of these middle posts, to the post in rear of all, to meet the plate which surmounts this rear line of posts; and a parallel plate, or rafter, should be laid from the two intermediate posts at the ends, to connect them, and for a central support to the roof. Intermediate central posts should also be placed opposite those in front, to support the central plate, and not exceeding 12 feet apart. A shed ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... sorter wipe his mustach en study. He 'low ter hisse'f, 'De pot rack know what gwine up de chimbley, de rafters know who's in de loft, de bed-cord know who und' de bed. I ain't no pot-rack, I ain't no rafter, en I ain't no bed-cord, but, please gracious! I'm gwine ter fin' who's in dat house, en I ain't gwine in dar nudder. Dey mo' ways ter fin' out who fell in de mill-pond widout fallin' ...
— The Book of Stories for the Storyteller • Fanny E. Coe
... of some brick-dust, a rafter and two empty bully-beef tins—all of which in combination bore the name of a village. He assumed his duties with a bland Pickwickian zest, which did good to the heart. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov 21, 1917 • Various
... away from these two wanderers. They gazed drearily about them. At a little distance stood a wooden church, black with age, and in a dismal state of ruin and decay, with broken windows, a great rift through the main body of the edifice, and a rafter dangling from the top of the square tower. Farther off was a farm-house, in the old style, as venerably black as the church, with a roof sloping downward from the three-story peak, to within a man's height ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... hall through the night; and when the third part of the night was passed, Grettir heard huge din without, and then one went up upon the houses and rode the hall, and drave his heels against the thatch so that every rafter ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris
... this creature when another prolonged shock of earthquake came. It was not a bump like the previous one, but a severe vibration which only served to shake the men in their chairs, but it shook the small monkey off the rafter, and the miserable little thing fell with a shriek and a flop ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... was attached to a rafter of the front verandah of a bungalow at Lahore. The owner of the house stated that the swallows in question had already reared one brood that year, and that the birds in question had nested in his verandah for some years. There is no doubt that some wire-tailed swallows ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar
... sat immersed in woe, his head in his hands. What calamity, he cried, has fallen on my house, and how have I sinned, O Lord, that punishment should fall upon me, and that my own son should be chosen to mete out my punishment? My house is riven from rafter to foundation stone. But, Father, at most—It seemed useless to plead. He stood apart; his grandmother stood silent and grave, not understanding fully, and Joseph foresaw that he could not count upon her to side with him against his father. But ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... follow more easily, for now you may use a rafter for the fulcrum of your iron lever and pry where the long nails grip the oak too tenaciously, and it is not long before you have the roof unboarded. And here you may have a surprise and be taught a lesson in wariness which you will ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... borne onward by the tide, A loving mother with her babe close sheltered at her side; One hand has grasped a rafter, the other guards her child; Oh, how she pleads with God and man in accents loud and wild! Men hear but give no answer, no human hand can save; Her voice, alas, is hushed in death by ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant
... 5th, 1689; all was quiet on the Island of Montreal. At the end of the evening's conversation, that necessary complement of every well-filled day, the men had hung their pipes, the faithful comrades of their labour, to a rafter of the ceiling; the women had put away their knitting or pushed aside in a corner their indefatigable spinning-wheel, and all had hastened to seek in sleep new strength for the labour of the morrow. Outside, the elements were unchained, the rain and hail ...
— The Makers of Canada: Bishop Laval • A. Leblond de Brumath
... fortune sprang full rife; When, slap, the savage made him feel His talons, newly arm'd with steel, By perching on his nasal member, As if it had been senseless timber. Outshriek'd the wight; but peals of laughter, Which threaten'd ceiling, roof, and rafter, From courtier, page, and monarch broke: Who had not laugh'd at such a joke? From me, so prone am I to such a sin, An empire had not held me in. I dare not say, that, had the pope been there, He would have join'd the laugh sonorous; But sad the king, ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... and often worked into elaborate bas-relief designs. But ordinarily the horse's head is a plain tenpin in shape or a squat bottle with a knob on the side by which it has been tied up, two cheeses at a time, on opposite sides of a rafter, while being smoked lightly golden and rubbed with olive oil and butter to make it all the ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown
... song ye may learn the nest," Said Yniol; "enter quickly." Entering then, Right o'er a mount of newly-fallen stones, The dusky-rafter'd many-cobweb'd hall, He found an ancient dame in dim brocade; And near her, like a blossom vermeil-white,[2] That lightly breaks a faded flower-sheath, Moved the fair Enid, all in faded silk, Her daughter. In a moment thought Geraint, "Here by God's ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... which they now entered extended across the entire east end of the building, and had windows upon three sides. These were heavily curtained. The apartment was lighted by a small cresset hanging from a rafter near the center ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... exclaimed, stretching himself still more, yawning and passing a hand through his black hair. "Hang them, they might as well shut up their guests in the smoke-house with the bacons and hams! I feel as cured as a side of pig, ready to be hung to a dirty rafter." ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... little bit of flour yit. The fences was all tore down, so that there wa'n't one standing, and the rails was burnt up. One shell come into the house and knocked a bedstead all to pieces for me. One come in under the roof and knocked out a rafter for me. The porch was all knocked down. There was seventeen dead horses on my land. They burnt five of 'em around my best peach-tree, and killed it; so I ha'n't no peaches this year. They broke down all my young apple-trees ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... and chalked to make it fit for dancing feet. The decorations for the dance consume much time, and into them the hostess throws many a loving thought. Pumpkins form the chief theme. In flower-like or hideous forms as jack-o'-lanterns they hold posts of honor on rafter ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... escape observation from the few persons on the pier I went down to the steerage cabin, which was a little triangular place in the bow, with an open stove in the middle of the floor and a bleary oil-lamp swinging from a rafter overhead. ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... Amram's house is called the "Two Seas"—"Baherein." It is one hundred feet in length, and twenty feet high, with walls four feet thick, neatly plastered over with mud mortar. The great door is a marvel of carving-work for Unyanyembe artisans. Each rafter within is also carved with fine designs. Before the front of the house is a young plantation of pomegranate trees, which flourish here as if they were indigenous to the soil. A shadoof, such as may be seen on the Nile, serves to draw water ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... inferior in all the true requisites of cheap and substantial building. Light sticks, uninjured by cutting mortices or tenons, a close basket-like manner of construction, short bearings, a continuous support for each piece of timber from foundation to rafter, and embracing and taking advantage of the practical fact, that the tensile and compressible strength of pine lumber is equal to one-fifth of that of wrought iron, constitute improvements introduced ...
— Woodward's Country Homes • George E. Woodward
... Merritt up on the carpet and they haven't decided yet whether to hang him to a rafter or boil him in oil. Some of 'em think he pulled Elisha to-day. Merritt is giving 'em a powerful argument. Says he never rode a harder finish in his life, but that the horse took a sudden notion to quit and did it. Didn't seem to be tired or anything, but just ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... high north wall are the remains of two buttresses. There is a small building which abuts on the east, and ranges along the southern side, which was probably the Chapter House of the Nuns. The walls are entire, the roof is of wood, and some of the rafter work is in fair preservation. It is in this building that the remains of Rosamond are supposed to have been deposited, when they were removed from the choir of the church, by the order of Hugh, Bishop ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 331, September 13, 1828 • Various
... upon the rafter of the roof by which he hung, and his long, slender, naked body, bare but for his waist-cloth, dropped as a great snake might drop between Jack and his father. Mr. Haydon made one clutch, and closed his fingers in a tremendous throttling grip about the rogue's neck. Jack caught ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... their houses shall be drown'd; Whilst you shall see your cottage rise, And grow a church before your eyes.' They scarce had spoke when fair and soft The roof began to mount aloft, Aloft rose every beam and rafter, The heavy wall climb'd slowly after; The chimney widen'd and grew higher. Became a steeple with a spire. The kettle to the top was hoist, And there stood fasten'd to a joist; Doom'd ever in suspense to dwell, 'Tis now no kettle, but a bell. A wooden jack which had almost ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... him stops the client's pace; The crowd that follows crush his panting sides, And trip his heels; he walks not but he rides. One elbows him, one jostles in the shoal, A rafter breaks his head or chairman's pole; Stockinged with loads of fat town dirt he goes, And some rogue-soldier with his hob-nailed shoes Indents his legs behind in bloody rows. See, with what smoke our doles we celebrate! A hundred guests invited ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... case with sand a mixture of coarse and fine particles gives the fewest voids; for stone an L{1}M{0}F{1} mixture and for gravel an L{8}M{0}F{2} mixture. Tamping reduces the voids in broken stone. Mr. Geo. W. Rafter gives the voids in clean, hand-broken limestone passing a 2-in. ring as 43 per cent. after being lightly shaken and 37 per cent. after being rammed. Generally speaking heavy ramming will reduce the voids in loose stone ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... few seconds behind the man, but those few seconds were fateful. As the pilot stepped into the saloon he beheld a sight that was enough to freeze him motionless. The big kerosene lamps, swung from the rafter braces above, shed over the interior a peculiar sickly radiance, yellowed now by reason of the pale morning light outside. Beneath one of the lamps a tableau was set. Sam Kirby and the man he had struck the night before ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... their swords hanging over his head, called out the name of his stepmother, (Kraka), to which long ago he had been bidden to appeal when in peril, and he found a speedy help in his need. For his shield, which hung aloft from the rafter, instantly fell and covered his unarmed body, and, as if on purpose, covered it from impalement by the cutthroats. He did not fail to make use of his luck, but, snatching his sword, lopped off both feet of the nearest of them. Gunwar, with equal energy, ran a spear through the other: she had ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... rain came roaring over us. The sound of it was like that of a host of cavalry coming at a gallop. We lay bracing the stalks, the blanket tied above us and were quite dry for a time. The rain rattled in the sounding sheaves and then came flooding down the steep gutters. Above us beam and rafter creaked, swaying, and showing glimpses of the dark sky. The rain passed—we could hear the last battalion leaving the field—and then the tumult ended as suddenly as it began. The corn trembled a few moments and hushed to a faint whisper. Then ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... the same name and line had inhabited it until now. Aunt Faith, exultingly, told each curious visitor that it had been built precisely two hundred and ten years. Out in the back kitchen, or lean-to, was hung to a rafter the identical gun with which the "old settler" had ranged the forest that stretched then from the very door; and higher up, across a frame contrived for it, was the "wooden saddle" fabricated for the back of the placid, slow-moving ox, in the ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... what he should reserve for breakfast, he fell to, ate sparingly, lit his pipe, and gazed around the wretched room, of which the walls were blue-washed with a most offensive shade of blue, the bare floor was frankly dry mud and dust, the roof was bare cob-webbed thatch and rafter, and the furniture a rickety table, a dangerous-looking cane-bottomed settee and a leg-rest arm-chair from which some one had removed the leg-rests. Had some scoundrelly oont-wallah pinched them for fuel? ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... joy, with careless hand, and happiness, had crown'd me, And the Muse shared my hours of leisure, pure and free. In those so joyous nights, lighted with friendly glee, How rang that dear abode with rhyme and merry laughter— Waking the household gods—how rang each shouting rafter! Then, weary of the feast, I from the wine-cup turn'd, For a new sudden fire within my bosom burn'd, And to my lady's bower I flew upon the morrow, And found her half in wrath and half in girlish sorrow, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... white, through which rays of light were caught and sent dancing. Along the wall on the left-hand side presses were overcharged with dusty tea-services. On the right were square grey windows, under which the convex sides of salad-bowls sparkled in the sun; and from rafter to rafter, in garlands and clusters like grapes, hung gilded mugs bearing devices suitable for children, and down the middle of the floor a terrace was built ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... at sawing, too, but after he was married he dropped that. But I've heard mother say that he took great pride in the hut when he brought her to it first, and said it was the best-built hut within fifty miles. He split every slab, cut every post and wallplate and rafter himself, with a man to help him at odd times; and after the frame was up, and the bark on the roof, he camped underneath and finished every bit of it—chimney, flooring, doors, windows, and partitions—by himself. Then he dug up a little garden in front, and planted a dozen ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... a good deal less injured than his rescuer; for, though a falling rafter had struck him down as he turned to leave the hut, this very accident had given him the benefit of such air as there had been in the cabin. Here and there he had been slightly burned, but he had not been forced ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... a kneeling or squatting position with her hands on a rope or bamboo rod, which is suspended from a rafter about the height of her shoulders. [53] She draws on this, while one or more old women, skilled in matters pertaining to childbirth, knead and press down on the abdomen, and finally remove the child. The naval cord is cut with a bamboo knife, [54] and is ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole
... companions were, she bade a regretful adieu to her hopes of recovering her stolen property. For how could she set him on the Tinker's felonious track without apprising them likewise? You might as well try to huroosh one chicken off a rafter and not scare the couple that were huddled beside it. The impossibility became more obvious presently as the constables, striding quickly down to where the group of women stood in the rain and wind with fluttering shawls and flapping cap-borders, said briskly, "Good-day to you all. Did any of yous ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... very plentiful. During our first winter, we had a deer hung on every rafter on the north side of the house. Our supply of meat for the first year or two depended upon our success ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... and bamboo walls, their every movement being magnified and strange. In his own part, from time to time he could see the bright green growth that had forced itself through the palm-thatch, and trace every bamboo rafter, save where, in places, all was ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... him Green floors and starry rafter, And many-coloured graven dolls Live for his lonely laughter. The dolls have crowns and aureoles, Helmets and horns and wings. For they are the saints and seraphim, The prophets and ...
— The Wild Knight and Other Poems • Gilbert Chesterton
... tasting beef as it ought to go into a man's mouth. I write it first. A Polled-Angus heifer, fed and watered and cared for like a child, should be killed suddenly without fright, and butchered properly; let the choice pieces hang from a rafter by green withes and be smoked with hickory logs until the fibres begin to dry in them, ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... the house of God!" thundered Mr. Shorto-Champernowne, with tones so resonant that they woke rafter echoes the organ itself had never roused. "Silence, and cease this sacrilegious brawling, or the consequences will be unutterably serious! Let those involved," he concluded more calmly, "appear before me in the vestry after divine service is at ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... an old Flemish farmhouse, and the room I'm sitting in has a carved rafter ceiling, red brick floor and nasty purple cabbage wallpaper. All the men of the house with the exception of the old man are at the war; one son has already died. The Germans have been through here. They tied the mayor of the ...
— "Crumps", The Plain Story of a Canadian Who Went • Louis Keene
... burn'd are roof and rafter, And they hang begrimed and black; And stair, and hall, and chapel, Are turn'd to dust ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... little tobacco-tin. In one of the rooms there were three or four beds arranged along the middle of the floor. The inspector pulled off the mattresses, and out from under each there leapt a dozen rats, which, if I may be believed, made for the walls and ran straight up them, disappearing in the rafter-holes at the top. The sight of countless rats hurrying up perpendicular walls may be familiar to some people, but I venture to call it an amazing spectacle, worthy of record. Then came the opening of one or two travelling-trunks. The inspector ran his hand through the clothes ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... lit, and then Manuel repeated his experiment by burning a piece, amid breathless excitement. No further doubt could exist, and then Manuel, taking a spring balance (weighing up to 50 lbs.) from the wall, hung it to a rafter, whilst the men put the lot into three separate bags and suspended them to the hook ...
— A Memory Of The Southern Seas - 1904 • Louis Becke
... the rannel-tree rafter to support herself. Willy thrust out his arm again, trembling ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... boy wouldn't say his prayers, An' when he went to bed at night, away upstairs, His Mammy heered him holler, an' his daddy heered him bawl, An' when they turn't the kivvers down, he wasn't there at all! An' they seeked him in the rafter-room, an' cubby-hole, an' press, An' seeked him up the chimbly-flue, an' ever'wheres, I guess; But all they ever found was thist his pants an' roundabout, An' the gobble-uns'll git ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... floor had no carpet, not even the descente de lit, which in France is considered indispensable even when the floor is of wood. In the corner was a low wooden bedstead with dingy curtains suspended from a rafter, and a paillasse of maize-leaves with a thin wool mattress above it. Coarse hempen sheets and a coloured coverlet completed the bedding. By the side against the wall was a broad prie-Dieu, with a lithograph just above it of the Holy Child bearing the cross. A plain table in ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... his castle wall; The gate was burnt with fire; Roof and rafter were fallen down, The folk were strangers all in the town, And strangers all ...
— Andromeda and Other Poems • Charles Kingsley
... us to have bread;—plowing, sowing, harrowing, reaping, threshing, grinding, baking.' JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, all ignorant savages will laugh when they are told of the advantages of civilized life. Were you to tell men who live without houses, how we pile brick upon brick, and rafter upon rafter, and that after a house is raised to a certain height, a man tumbles off a scaffold, and breaks his neck; he would laugh heartily at our folly in building; but it does not follow that men are better without houses. No, Sir, (holding up a slice of a good loaf,) ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... humble interior of my hermitage, during some boisterous night of winter, when the gusty wind would be howling around the roof, and the rain beating on the casement, but when, in the calm within, the cheerful flame would roar in the chimney, and glance bright on rafter and wall, still impress me as if the recollection were in reality that of a scene witnessed, not of a mere vision conjured up by the fancy. But it was all the idle dream of a truant lad, who would fain now, as on ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... to do. To win fame, to gain wealth, to plunder, and to slay—these were the passions that ruled him. The ocean was his only home. He derided the comforts of a warm fireside and scorned the man who should sleep under a sooty rafter or die on a bed of straw. To give up his last breath amid the clamour of battle was his one unalterable ambition; for only those who died thus, besprinkled with blood, could ever hope to win favour of the pagan gods, or to enter the sacred halls of Valhalla. In the spirit of his times he ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton
... steal From the shocking laughter Of the old, to kneel By a dripping rafter Under the discolored eaves, Out of trunks with hingeless covers Lifting tales of saints and lovers, ...
— Second April • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... while the shoemaker still slept, the soldier was astir again. He shivered as he rose, and went to the window, where his clothes were hanging from a rafter. The water was still dripping from them. Wrapt in a blanket he sat down by the open window to write while the morning air should dry ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... the right, Nor ever will hereafter: Fling up her name with all your might; Shake roof-tree and shake rafter. But of old deeds she need not brag,— How she broke sword and fetter: Fling out again the old striped Flag; She'll ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... labors, Struggling and shifting and shoving, Pushing and pounding your neighbors, Fighting for leeway for laughter, Toiling for leisure for loving! Hark, through the window and up to the rafter, Madder and merrier, Deeper and verier, Sweeter, contrarier, Dafter and dafter, A song arises,— A thrill, an intrusion, A reel, an illusion, A rapture, a crisis ...
— More Songs From Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey
... Mexican ranches that dot the Southwest wherever there is water enough to irrigate a few acres. The brown block of adobe house stood on an arid, rocky hillside, and looked like a part of it, save for the white door, and a few bright scarlet strings of chile hung over the rafter ends to dry. Down in the arroyo was the little fenced patch where corn and chile and beans were raised, and behind the house was a round goat corral of wattled brush. The skyward rocky waste of the mountain lifted behind the house, and the empty ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... cooed in its dovecots shady; Down in the rose-walk fountains played; Many a lovelorn lord and lady Here in the moonlight sighed and strayed; Here was beauty and love and laughter, Splendour and eminence bravely won; But now two walls and a blackened rafter Grimly tell the tale ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 16, 1917. • Various
... chose to accompany him on his important mission. They had reached a point about fifty yards from the shacks, two of which were well-nigh demolished, when they heard a voice and turning saw Warde Hollister drop from a rafter ...
— Roy Blakeley in the Haunted Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... took him down below a cramping rafter, And showed him, through a manhole in the floor, The water in desperate straits like frantic fish, Salmon and sturgeon, lashing with their tails. Then he shut down the trap door with a ring in it ...
— Mountain Interval • Robert Frost
... dusty, over a rafter in the shed, and Harriet sewed a buckle on the strip that goes around the waist. I cleaned and ...
— Adventures In Friendship • David Grayson
... in a rafter hung a rusty tin lantern, through the patterned holes of which a single candle had once sprinkled with light the progress of the farmer's evening chores. That, too, had belonged to the early time, and from a dim corner I drew another important piece of furniture of that day. ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... wood scenery; conjures up innumerable beings, of every size and shape, to people its alleys and smile through its thickets; and is by no means displeased to find some of its inventions half-realized in a decorated panel or grinning extremity of a rafter. ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... stood a rude writing table on which were a few official papers. Ranged about the room were a dozen or more rawhide-seated chairs, each standing stiffly at "attention" against the wall scrupulously equidistant order. Glaring at me in crude lettering from a broad rafter facing the door was the grimly patriotic sentiment, "Libertad o Muerte." (Liberty or Death!) In the southwest corner of the room stood a low and narrow cot, beneath whose thin serape covering a tall, gaunt cadaverous frame was plainly outlined. From the headpost of the cot dangled a sword ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... bought in to last till Christmas. The active work was finished by about seven o'clock. Dinner was now got ready. It consisted of two bowls of broth, then boiled dumplings, and lastly some stewed giblets. Having made things tidy, our friends now tied on woollen hoods, and each taking down from the rafter-hooks a capacious basket, they went forth to do ...
— Our Little Lady - Six Hundred Years Ago • Emily Sarah Holt
... up, and clung by his elbows. "No good," he whispered hoarsely. "The nearest rafter is a foot below. Let me have the coat. It will be safer than trusting to your hands. I might ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... and their dependants, the labour, though immense, was greatly facilitated by everyone's bringing his post, or his rafter, or his pole strung with thatching, ready for instant use. The materials thus prepared being afterwards secured together by thongs, there was literally "neither hammer, nor axe, nor any tool of iron heard in the ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville |
