"Shears" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of a pretty brunette in white, whom Elise whispered was Miss Bonham from Lexington, they were rigging up some kind of a coat of mail for Lieutenant Logan to wear in one of the tableaux. Ranald, with a huge sheet of cardboard and the library shears, was manufacturing a pair of giant scissors, half as long as himself, which a blonde in blue was waiting to cover with tin foil. She was singing coon songs while she waited, to the accompaniment of a mandolin, and in such a gay, rollicking ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... the day. Graceful and distinguished in his bearing, he leaned his weary body, against the stake that supported the scaffold on which he was to suffer the last degree of public infamy. But now the executioner approached, holding a pair of large glistening shears. He gathered the soft brown curls of the count in his rough grasp, and very soon the glossy locks fell, and there remained nothing but the shorn head of the felon. This done, the executioner drew off the gold-embroidered ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... of a finish and an accuracy which have become proverbial; the Howe scales; the Goodyear boot- and shoe-machinery; Stow's flexible shaft; Lechner's coal-mining engine; Allen & Roeder's riveting-machine; and Delamater's punches and shears,—are a few more of the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... cobbler who, learning that a tailor had advertised for "frogs," catches a bagful and carries them to him, demanding one dollar a hundred. The testy tailor imagining himself the victim of a hoax, throws his shears at his head, and Timothy, in revenge empties the bag of bull-frogs upon the clean floor of Buckram's shop. Next day Timothy's sign was disfigured to read—Shoes Mended and Frogs Caught. By Timothy Drew.—The Frog Catcher, Henry J. Finn, American ...
— 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.
... and wood. She was washing the dishes, her hands all suds, When the sound began, Long as the span Of a white road snaking about a hill. The orchards are filled With cherry blossoms at butterfly poise. Hawthorn buds are cracking, And in the distance a shepherd is clacking His shears, snip-snipping the wool from his sheep. The notes are asleep, Lying adrift on the air In level lines Like sunlight hanging in pines and pines, Strung and threaded, All imbedded In the blue-green of the hazy pines. Lines—long, straight ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... seen in the morning, which formed a shade as impenetrable as the roof of any house. The branches did not spread far, nor any one branch much further than another; on the outside it was like a green bush shorn with shears, but when we sate upon a bench under it, looking upwards, in the middle of the tree we could not perceive any green at all; it was like a hundred thousand magpies' nests clustered and matted together, the twigs and boughs being so intertwined ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... shears for cutting off evenly and squarely the ends of copper dynamo brushes. The brushes when uneven from wear are removed from the brush holders, and their ends are sheared off ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... which to knock off the rough frame of boards that almost formed a box around the package, and Ruth ran for the shears to cut the stitches of ...
— Wakulla - A Story of Adventure in Florida • Kirk Munroe
... These many years Have we lived door by door: The Fates have laid aside their shears Perhaps for some ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... to die off. The best flocks yield an average of seven pounds. The shearing season, which begins in early June, lasts about six weeks. Shearers get six and a half cents a head for inferior sheep, and seven and a half cents for the better quality, and a good hand shears from sixty to eighty in a day. It is not likely that sheep-raising will attain anything of the prominence which cattle-raising is likely to assume. The potato beetle "scare" is not of much account in the country of the potato beetle. The farmers ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... thee, that the veteran worn and grey Curbed the course of Bonaparte, rolled the thunders of Assaye— Let it tell thee, stranger, likewise, that the goodly garb he wears Started into shape and being from the DOUDNEY BROTHERS' shears! Seek thou next the rooms of Willis—mark, where D'Orsay's Count is bending, See the trouser's undulation from his graceful hip descending; Hath the earth another trouser so compact and love-compelling? Thou canst find it, stranger, only, if thou ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... his mind back over the years that had gone by since the day when Conward proposed a partnership to him. He saw again his little office where he ground out "stuff" for The Call, the littered desk and floor, the cartoons on the walls, the big shears, and the paste pot—yes, the paste pot, and the lock he had installed to protect it, and his select file of time copy, from depredation. And the smell of printer's ink; even yet, when business took Dave into a printing office, the smell of ink brought back those old, happy days. ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... out all the clothes herself for men and women too. I 'spect her big shears an' patterns an' old cuttin' table are over at the house now. Miss Julia cut out all the clothes an' then the colored girls sewed 'em up but she looked 'em all over and they better be sewed right! Miss Julia ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States • Various
... but he did not bring any word of seeking parents. The nearest he came to mentioning the subject was after supper, when the baby was asleep and Bud trying to cut a small pair of overalls from a large piece of blue duck that Cash had brought. The shears were dull, and Lovin Child's little rompers were so patched and shapeless that they were not much of a guide, so Bud was swearing ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... extensive iron-works, has seen a gigantic pair of shears worked by machinery, and used for cutting in two, bars of iron that are from time to time thrust between its blades. Supposing these blades to be the only visible parts of the apparatus, anyone observing their movements (or rather the movement ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... where the pine-trees grow mast-high. Does it not seem as if the young wood outside ought to be ashamed at the sight of them? And there are hedges there, quite grown beyond their keeper's hands, blooming and sending forth shoots without thought of shears or knife. ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... it was easy to slip away to the postern gate, which his key enabled him to enter, and he was not long in discovering the pavilion which sheltered his divinity. He wore a big apron and carried a pair of garden shears with which he lopped and trimmed a shrub now and then by way of accounting for his intrusion, and sometimes he was rewarded by a glimpse of her. But that was all, for, with a diffidence he had never known before, he did not venture near enough to ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... they were inside the vineyard walls, for fragrance assailed her nostrils, fragrance of ripened grapes, of grapes crushed under foot as the swift pickers went snipping the full purple bunches with their shears. ...
— Daphne, An Autumn Pastoral • Margaret Pollock Sherwood
... think I shall die with it in my hand; but I shall live these ten years, my Antony, notwithstanding the fears of my wife, whom I left most melancholy on that account." The "fears" and the melancholy were, alas! to be justified, rather than the "good spirits;" and the shears of Atropos were to close, not in ten years, but in little more than twenty months, upon that ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... without a handle, and cooked about a pint of fat yellow oak-grubs; and I was about to fall to when we were discovered, and the full weight of combined family influence was brought to bear on the situation. We had broken a new pair of shears digging out those grubs from under the bark of the she-oaks, and had each taken a blade as his own especial property, which we thought was the best thing to do under the circumstances. Uncle wanted those shears badly, so he received us with the buggy whip—and he didn't draw the colour ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... first thing," she declared, "I shall go in the side entry and take down the garden shears and cut the roses to put in the Dresden vases on the marble ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... by the following arrangement: The heavy metal piece containing the magazine, D, constitutes a striker, which is held in place by a plain ball, G, near the axis of the fuse and by a safety pellet, H. On first movement in the gun, this latter by inertia shears a suspending wire and leaves the ball free to escape above it, which it does by centrifugal force, leaving the magazine striker, D, free to fire itself by momentum on the needle shown above it, on impact. There is a second safety arrangement, not shown in the figure, consisting of a cross pin, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 586, March 26, 1887 • Various
... Tim Healy's place with two other women. He rushes up to her, catches hold of this big shock of hair that was trailin' behind her, and before she knew what was comin' he whipped out a big pair of sharp, shiny shears, and made as if he was going to give her a hair-cut. At that she begins to scream, but the priest he wouldn't let go. 'I'll cut it off,' he says, 'close,' he says, 'if you don't swear on this crucifix to be a good squaw to Clem Dewler, and never set so much as one of your little feet in these ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... kingly form, robed and crowned, yet standing with arms and hands filled, symbolizing someone with great plenty in foreign lands. At the feet, a severed circle, some disordered boxes, a pair of large, closed shears pointing toward another commanding form, though obstacles lie between them. Also a crouching form, in part human, with large eyes, and now, on his back a weighty something, facing the less pretentious ...
— Cupology - How to Be Entertaining • Clara
... cried in military cadence, as the florists set out. Roumelia was the name Jack had given the rose-lands near the stream, in fanciful allusion to the Turkish province of flowers. Halting at the gardener's cottage, Vincent procured an immense pair of shears, like a double rapier in size, and, bidding the man follow to gather the blossoms, he ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... cringed to his deanship in very low strains, To others he boasted of knocking out brains, And slitting of noses, and cropping of ears, While his own ass's zags were more fit for the shears. ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... Thanks! [He watches her as she trims and arranges the flowers.] Awfully long fingers you have! Wish I was a rose, or a ring, or a pair of shears! I say, d'you ever notice what a devil of a fellow I am for originality, what? [Unlike JOHN, is evidently impressed by her.] You've got a delicate little den up here! Not so much low livin' and high thinkin', as low lights and no thinkin' at ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: The New York Idea • Langdon Mitchell
... a Sheraton cabinet and table were bare of all contents. On the floor reposed countless shattered articles of glass and porcelain; jumbled together with blotters an pastepot and shears and ink-stand and other utensils. Ink had been poured in grotesque pattern on rugs and parquetry and ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... Halstead to take a pair of sharp shears and cut off an inch and a half of his turkey's "quitter," if it were too long and bothered him about eating. If the turkey grew "dainty," as Tibbetts expressed it, Halstead was to make the dough into rolls about the size of his thumb, then open the bird's beak, shove the rolls in, and ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... morning, men came into the barn, which opened off the Sheep-shed. They had on coarse, old clothing, and carried queer-looking shears in their hands. The Sheep could see them now and then when the door was open. Once the farmer stood in the doorway and seemed to be counting them. This made them huddle together more closely than ever. They could see the men carrying clean yellow straw into ...
— Among the Farmyard People • Clara Dillingham Pierson
... forecastings. He was the manager over from Loughboro'. The lady was manageress, and had come over to superintend the initial proceedings at Kilronan. Somehow I didn't like them. They chilled the atmosphere. There was that cool, business-like air about them, that L. S. D. expression that shears off the rays of imagination, and measures and weighs everything by the same low standard. I saw Father Letheby buoyant, enthusiastic, not merely hopeful, but certain of the success of his enterprise. I saw these two business people chatting and consulting together, and I knew by their looks that ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... say once. She gived me five dollars and then ask what else. I look at her and say, 'Sam wants a spear or two of yer shinin' hair,' and Miss Mabel takes shears and cut a little curl. I'se got 'em now. I never spend the money," and from an old leathern wallet Sam drew a bill and a soft silken curl, which he laid ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... now, after twelve years of married life, was still a handsome woman. Her dark eyes shone with the same bewitching fire; her beautiful hair had, in accordance with the orthodox Jewish custom, fallen under the shears on the day of her marriage, but the silken band and string of pearls that henceforth decked her brow did not detract from her oriental beauty. Hirsch was proud of her and he would have been completely happy if God had vouchsafed her a son. Like ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... were gathering at the sunny side of the house; the auctioneer, at the window, was selling pots and candles and pruning-shears and kitchen chairs. Felicia felt somehow curiously aloof, and almost like an intruder, in this crowd of people, all of whom had known each other for long years in Asquam. They shouted pleasantries across intervening heads, and roared as one when somebody called ...
— The Happy Venture • Edith Ballinger Price
... while all who disobeyed the order were compelled to pay a fine. Those who yielded were obliged "to kneel down at the gates of the city and have their coats cut off just even with the ground," the part that lay on the ground as they kneeled being condemned to suffer by the shears. "Being done with a good humor, it occasioned mirth among the people, and soon broke the custom of their wearing long coats, especially in places near Moscow and those ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... which Wilhelm referred so loudly from the balcony of his palace. As barbarians we are only an excellent and indispensable market for the Germans' merchandise, a two-hundred-million flock of sheep ready for the shears. As a cultured nation we are a power dangerous to the Teuton's dream of world dominion. And the Jewish question, with its excesses and nails driven into heads, is that trump which our honest German neighbour has always kept hidden ...
— The Shield • Various
... seeing the dances, Powhatan himself appeared and was received with great show of honor, all rising from their seats except King Arahatic, and shouting loudly. To Powhatan ample presents were made of penny-knives, shears, and toys, and he invited them to visit him at one of his seats called Powhatan, which was within a mile of the Falls, where now stands the city of Richmond. All along the shore the inhabitants stood in clusters, offering food to the strangers. The habitation of Powhatan was situated on a high hill ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... of clear spring water. It ever stands before the dread Door where a dead man rests. —No lock of shorn hair! Every daughter Of woman shears it for the dead. ...
— Alcestis • Euripides
... tailor rode on a goat, and he carried his shears and the goose he ironed with. He balanced himself pretty well until a bird sat on his queue, and that bent him over backward so that he nearly ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various
... been talking in the town, as is not improbable, about little Annie Anderson's visit to her mistress, and so the story of the hair came to be known, or not, I cannot tell; but it was a notable coincidence that a few days after, Mrs Bruce came to the back-door, with a great pair of shears in her hand, and calling ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... the beginning of years There came to the rule of the State Men with a pair of shears, Men with an Estimate— Strachey with Muir for leaven, Lytton with locks that fell, Ripon fooling with Heaven, And Temple riding like H—ll! And the bigots took in hand Cess and the falling of rain, And the measure of sifted sand The dealer puts in the ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... a little preparation. She had the passions and instincts which make a model goddess, that is, those which make not quite a model woman. Had it been possible for the earth and mankind to be entirely in her grasp for a while, had she handled the distaff, the spindle, and the shears at her own free will, few in the world would have noticed the change of government. There would have been the same inequality of lot, the same heaping up of favours here, of contumely there, the same generosity before ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... was very different from that of the boy who, less than a year before, had left the old chateau of his fathers with tear-stained cheeks. His long curls had fallen under the shears, and his closely cropped hair showed to advantage his well-formed head. He was tall for his age, his muscles had hardened with constant exercise, and his face, neck, and hands were tanned to a ruddy brown by the hot suns ...
— The Flamingo Feather • Kirk Munroe
... spaces of calm water, so that there would be nothing to stop the boats from reaching the island. The satisfactory intelligence was soon made known through the ship. The smaller boats were at once lowered, while the carpenter and boatswain set to work to erect shears for hoisting out the launch. As soon as the boats were ready, the commander ordered them to be loaded with provisions, and canvas for tents, and a portion of the powder, and they were sent off under ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... time. Our crew had now long acted together, and frequently under the most trying circumstances; and they showed their training, if men ever did, on the present occasion. Everybody was busy; and we had the shears up, and both masts stepped, in the course of a few hours. By the time the main-mast was in, I had the fore-mast rigged, the jib-boom in its place, the sprit-sail yard crossed—everything carried ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... outlines of anatomy and physiology, was put in the hands of a publisher; a Synopsis of Pharmacy and Materia Medica, a work of enormous labor, was well under way; and other literary projects were actively planned; when, suddenly, the summons came which, in an instant, with the shears of fate, slit the strand of this activity. The rest of the story may be told in the words of the biographer appointed by the Medical Society of the County of Philadelphia to prepare a ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... scarce my shoes did wet. I being come to this long-looked-for land, Did mark, remark, note, renote, viewed, and scanned; And I saw nothing that could change my will, But that I thought myself in England still. The kingdoms are so nearly joined and fixed, There scarcely went a pair of shears betwixt; There I saw sky above, and earth below, And as in England, there the sun did show; The hills with sheep replete, with corn ...
— The Pennyles Pilgrimage - Or The Money-lesse Perambulation of John Taylor • John Taylor
... inserted into them so that the axles may turn freely. Close to each end of the windlass are two holes, so adjusted that handspikes can be fitted into them. To the bottom of the lower block are fastened shears made of iron, whose prongs are brought to bear upon the stones, which have holes bored in them. When one end of the rope is fastened to the windlass, and the latter is turned round by working the handspikes, the rope winds round the windlass, gets taut, and ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... loftiest sense of the term. Judge Wilkinson had a difficulty with a tailor in Louisville, Kentucky, who attempted an imposition upon him to which he would not submit. A quarrel ensued, and the knight of the needle and shears determined on revenge. Collecting about him his ready associates, they went to the hotel where Wilkinson lodged, and waylaid him at the door between the dining-parlor and the reception-room, and attacked ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... to hurt that man afore 'tis necessary,' says Sir John; and with that he takes aim and lets fly, and shears the linstock clean in two, right in the fellow's hand. I saw the end of it—match and all—fly halfway across the platform, and popped back my head as the dozen Genoese there turned their faces up at us. The pity was, we hadn't time for ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... hobble-de-hoy of a girl, with round eyes, and a long white-apron, and bare arms, came down the little walk, and—eyeing the peer with an awful curiosity—presented the shears to the charming Atropos, who clipped off the withered blossoms that had bloomed their hour, and were to cumber the stalk ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... She repudiated the stigma of being thought a murderess, and believed that her act would be the means of saving thousands of lives. She was dragged through the streets, taken to the executioner, and asked for the loan of his shears and cut off a lock of her hair. When asked if she found the journey long, she replied with perfect composure, "Oh no, I am not afraid of being too late." Subsequently one of the Girondin deputies said of her, "She has killed us, but she has ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... Apiarian has a pair of sharp pruning-shears, and the limb on which the bees have clustered, is of no value, and so small, that it can be cut without jarring them off, this may be done, and the bees carried on it and then shaken off ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... disposed to a more amicable mode of discussing what I had advanced in regard to Pope's moral character." As Major Sturgeon observes, "There never was a set of more amicable officers—with the exception of a boxing-bout between Captain Shears and the Colonel." ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... quarter of a mile in length, behind and ahead of Vanamee. They were arranged, as it were, en echelon, not in file—not one directly behind the other, but each succeeding plough its own width farther in the field than the one in front of it. Each of these ploughs held five shears, so that when the entire company was in motion, one hundred and seventy-five furrows were made at the same instant. At a distance, the ploughs resembled a great column of field artillery. Each driver was ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... but I felt that someone was there who wished to see the young monk's grave. For a moment I stood there. Then I went to the house where I kept my tools for my work in the cemetery, and got a shears which I used for lopping the cypress trees. I took a ladder quickly, set it against the wall, mounted it, and from the cypress I had seen moving I lopped some of the boughs. The sobbing ceased. As the boughs fell down from the tree ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... interior of the vessel was supported by a complex falsework of latticed metal, then the four-foot steel plates and the mighty embers, the pride of the great MacDougall, were cut away as though they were made of paper by revolving saws and enormous power shears. The sphere, grooved for the repellers and with the members, braces, and central machinery complete, of the exact dimensions of the originals, was rapidly moulded of a stiff, plastic substance resembling clay. This matrix soon hardened into a rock-like ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... of the genuine Blackwood stamp, if one only goes properly about it. Of course I don't speak of the political articles. Everybody knows how they are managed, since Dr. Moneypenny explained it. Mr. Blackwood has a pair of tailor's-shears, and three apprentices who stand by him for orders. One hands him the "Times," another the "Examiner" and a third a "Culley's New Compendium of Slang-Whang." Mr. B. merely cuts out and intersperses. It is soon done—nothing but "Examiner," "Slang-Whang," and "Times"—then ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... life more strong, Though the prow reel round and the helm point wrong, And sharp reefs whiten the shoreward way. 1290 For the steersman time sits hidden astern, [Ant. 1. With dark hand plying the rudder of doom, And the surf-smoke under it flies like fume As the blast shears off and the oar-blades churn The foam of our lives that to death return, Blown back as they break to the gulfing gloom. What cloud upon heaven is arisen, what shadow, what sound, [Str. 2. From the world ...
— Erechtheus - A Tragedy (New Edition) • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... difficult undertaking, for the vessel was rolling heavily. It was first got alongside, two ropes were passed over it, and it was parbuckled on board. Shears were made of two spars, and the end was placed against the stump, which projected six feet above the deck. By the aid of the shears, it was hoisted erect and lashed to the stump, wedges were driven in to tighten the lashings, ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty
... Provoke incitegi. Prow antauxa parto. Prowess valoreco, kuragxegeco. Prowl vagi. Proximate proksima, apuda. Proximity proksimeco, apudeco. Proxy anstatauxulo. Prudence singardemo. Prudent singardema, prudenta. Prune cxirkauxhaki. Prune seka pruno. Pruning shears brancxotondilo. Prussian, a Pruso. Prussic acid ciana acido. Pry sercxi, rigardeti. Psalm psalmo. Psalmody psalmokantado. Psalter psalmaro. Pseudonym pseuxdonomo. Psychology psikologio. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... spreads the glittering forfex wide, To inclose the lock; now joins it, to divide. Even then, before the fatal engine closed, A wretched sylph too fondly interposed; Fate urged the shears, and cut the sylph in twain (But airy substance soon unites again), The meeting points the sacred hair dissever From the fair head, for ever, ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... turtle to the surface, and held it, struggling and gnashing its jaws, close to the steep bank. In a few moments the line slackened, and the turtle disappeared. The fight was over! The sharp horny jaws had bitten through treble-twisted brass wire as clean as though cut by shears. My visions of turtle ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... protect himself from the sun Bouvard wore on his head a handkerchief, fastened so as to look like a turban. Pecuchet wore his cap, and he had a big apron with a pocket in front, in which a pair of pruning-shears, his silk handkerchief, and his snuff-box jostled against one another. Bare-armed, side by side, they dug, weeded, and pruned, imposing tasks on each other, and eating their meals as quickly as ever they could, taking care, however, to drink ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... rate the man would expect to be still his own master, acting for himself and independent of all outer control. Our English Hodge, when taken from the plow to the camp, would, probably, submit without a murmur to soap and water and a barber's shears; he would have received none of that education which would prompt him to rebel against such ordinances; but the American citizen, who for awhile expects to shake hands with his captain whenever he sees him, and is astonished ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... - 'They would not be callees if they did not: I have known a Gitana gain twenty ounces of gold, by means of the hokkano baro, in a few hours, whilst the silly Gypsy, her husband, would be toiling with his shears for a fortnight, trimming the horses of the Busne, and yet not be a dollar richer at ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... metamorphosis in all the pages of Ovid so wonderful as that which the great magician of the shears and thimble is capable of effecting. If there be the most unpleasant disproportions in the turn of your limbs—any awkwardness or deformity in your figure, the enchantment of this mighty wizard instantly communicates symmetry and elegance. The incongruous and unseemly furrows ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 362, Saturday, March 21, 1829 • Various
... These shears she held forward, and with them she snipped off, as noiselessly as possible, a lock of ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... guerdon when we hope to find, Comes the blind Fury with th' abhorred shears, And slits ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... town, that lay in the bottom of the basin, and away at the old quarries on the opposite side of the space. Mrs. Forbes was in the garden. She was a tall woman with white hair. She came up the path taking off her thick gloves, laying down her shears. It was autumn. She wore ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... slightly inward. The lower mandible, which is powerful, and is indented at its point to receive the hook, has a very sharp edge, which, with that of the upper mandible, constitutes a pair of formidable shears. The color of the bill is pale yellow, passing to horn color toward the median ridge, and the whole surface is sprinkled with dark brown blotches. The nostrils are scarcely visible, and are situated in a narrow cleft at the base of the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 829, November 21, 1891 • Various
... had always been in the habit of doing. Well, I'm told they up and makes Simpson an offer to get rid of the sheep. Jim has over five thousand, an' it's just before lambing, and them pore ewes, all heavy, is being druv' down to Watson's shearing-pens, that Jim always shears at. Jim an' two herders and a couple of dawgs—least, this is the way I heard it—is drivin' 'em easy, 'cause, as I said before, it's just before lambing. It does now seem awful cruel to me to shear just before lambing, but ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... reference has been so often made to them in these pages, that a brief description has been included. For market the clumps are cut in squares and the whole plant sold. Treated in this way the greengrocers can keep them in good condition by watering until sold. For use the leaves are cut with shears close to the ground. If allowed to stand in the garden, cuttings may be made at intervals of two or three weeks all ...
— Culinary Herbs: Their Cultivation Harvesting Curing and Uses • M. G. Kains
... I occasionally saw this bee cutting out her nesting-material. Her mandibles worked like perfect shears. When she had cut out her circular or her oblong patches, she rolled them up, and, holding them between her legs, flew away with them. I have seen her carry them into little openings in old rails, or old posts. About the period of ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... that the clear spirit doth raise (That last infirmity of noble minds) To scorn delights and live laborious days; But the fair guerdon when we hope to find, And think to burst out into sudden blaze, Comes the blind Fury with the abhorred shears And slits the ...
— Familiar Quotations • Various
... grow. Though they have no fore-teeth in their upper jaw, yet they are enabled somehow or other to crop from the willows and birch trees twigs of considerable thickness, cutting them off as clean as if the trees were pruned by a gardener's shears. ...
— Quadrupeds, What They Are and Where Found - A Book of Zoology for Boys • Mayne Reid
... and driving them off to the north. Next they caught and began to saddle their horses. The great white tilted waggons of the various laagers filed along the road around the eastern end of Bulwana. Lastly, up went a pair of shears over 'Long Tom,' and at this he descended to the earth with the good news that the enemy were ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... went on briskly, and the bridge over the Tsavo rapidly neared completion. As the piers and abutments progressed in height, the question of how to lift the large stones into their positions had to be solved. We possessed no cranes for this purpose, so I set to work and improvised a shears made of a couple of thirty-foot rails. These were bolted together at the top, while the other ends were fixed at a distance of about ten feet apart in a large block of wood. This contrivance acted capitally, and by manipulation ...
— The Man-eaters of Tsavo and Other East African Adventures • J. H. Patterson
... the scissors, said Remarkable, producing from beneath her petticoat of green moreen a pair of dull-looking shears; well, upon my say-so, you have sewed on the rags as well ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... one man, one man only, in my opinion, besides yourself, who would be capable of fighting Lupin and reducing him to cry for mercy. M. Ganimard, would you very much mind if we called in the assistance of Holmlock Shears?" ...
— The Blonde Lady - Being a Record of the Duel of Wits between Arsne Lupin and the English Detective • Maurice Leblanc
... Alick?" added Mr. Clare; "they, at least, are inoffensive pets. I dreaded the shears without your superintendence, but Joe insisted that they ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... question of whether the finished glove will stretch evenly or too much or too little in one direction or the other. After this the trank or outline of the glove must be cut out. In olden times of glove manufacture an outline was traced upon the leather and the pattern was cut with shears. Modern invention has produced dies and presses which are universally used. The steel die has the outline of a double glove, including the opening for the thumb piece. The die rests upon the bed of the press. Several tranks are laid upon it, the lever is drawn, and in a moment the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 794, March 21, 1891 • Various
... is thy nativity; Had Fate a luckier one, she'd give it ye. She chose a thread of greatest length, And doubly twisted it for strength: Nor will be able with her shears To cut it off these forty years. Then who says care will kill a cat? Rebecca shows they're out in that. For she, though overrun with care, Continues healthy, fat, and fair. As, if the gout should seize the head, Doctors pronounce the patient dead; But, ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... a maiden like Fate, who with abhorred shears fashions strange shapes and borderings of foliage unknown to mere nature. And further still, in yonder obscure and shadowy corner, is one who by her art can penetrate the future and outstrip the foot of Time himself. For see, upon her cards, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 5, 1916 • Various
... will inhabit the land, and the Emerald Isle will once more become great, glorious, and free, Furst flower o' the airth, Furst gem o' the say. No longer will the gallant men of Connaught bow their meek heads to American shears, no longer present their well-developed jaws to Yankee razors; but, instead of this, flocking in their thousands on saints' days and market days to their respective county towns, and especially to Galway, will form en queue at the door of Mr. McCoy, to save the ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... tearing it away in great shreds. And back of the canines were other teeth that were still larger, but shorter and broader, and shaped more like notched knife-blades. Those of the lower jaw worked inside those of the upper, like shears, and they were very handy for cutting the large chunks into pieces small enough to go down his throat. By the time he got through with a partridge there was not much left of it but a puddle of brown feathers. His claws, too, were very ...
— Forest Neighbors - Life Stories of Wild Animals • William Davenport Hulbert
... wild-eyed. I saw the fight enter a new phase. The captain fell to the seafloor, toppled by the enormous mass weighing him down. Then the shark's jaws opened astoundingly wide, like a pair of industrial shears, and that would have been the finish of Captain Nemo had not Ned Land, quick as thought, rushed forward with his harpoon and driven its dreadful ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... him to tell the truth. He says: "If you should take a razor or shears and cut off this long hair, I should be powerless and in the hands of my enemies." Samson sleeps, and that she may not wake him up during the process of shearing, help is called in. You know that the barbers of the East have such a skillful way of manipulating the head to this very day that, ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... youth, Devoid of talents, principles, and truth. 'Tis right they should suppose, still two are found; Who take their course continually round. The first that in your pleasure grounds appears; I'd have you, on his wings, to use the shears. ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... him. He waxed lean and poor of flesh, and fell into the fellowship of herdmen and shepherds, and daily they would give him of their meat and drink. And when he did any evil deed they would beat him with rods, and so they clipped him with shears and ...
— Stories of King Arthur and His Knights - Retold from Malory's "Morte dArthur" • U. Waldo Cutler
... man set out to manufacture gloves, usually only a few dozen pairs, he cut out a pattern from a shingle or a piece of pasteboard, laid it upon a skin, marked around it, and cut it out with shears. Pencils were not common, but the glovemaker was fully equal to making his own. He melted some lead, ran it into a crack in the kitchen floor—and cracks were plentiful—and then used this "plummet," ...
— Makers of Many Things • Eva March Tappan
... glass, and in the course of the next few hours the guns were got ashore, shears being erected on the rock, and the heavy masses of metal and their carriages were landed, beside a good deal of other material likely to be useful in ...
— Syd Belton - The Boy who would not go to Sea • George Manville Fenn
... sawing the air. With an immense caution, I extracted from the bag such a knife as they use for cutting collops off legs. The doctor frowned, and with his first and second fingers imitated the action of scissors. Again I searched, and found a most diabolical pair of cock-nosed shears, capable of vandyking the interiors of elephants. The doctor then slowly lowered his left shoulder till the navvy's right wrist was supported by the bench, pausing a moment as the spent volcano rumbled anew. Lower and lower the doctor sank, ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... confess her guilt next to swimming. If it fails, then cast her with her thumbs and toes tied across into a pond, and if she sink not then is she certainly a witch. Other trials there are, as that by scalding water—sticking knives across—heating of the horseshoe—tying of knots—the sieve and the shears; but the only ordeals safely to be relied on, are the swimming and the stool before mentioned, and from these your witch shall rarely escape. Above all, be sure and search carefully for the witch-mark. I doubt not we shall find it fairly and legibly writ in the ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... captor prepared my prison for me. It was an almost needless precaution for I had been so cramped between his fingers that I feared I could never again use my legs or wings. Just before putting me in my rude prison house he brought a pair of shears and bade Betty clip ...
— Dickey Downy - The Autobiography of a Bird • Virginia Sharpe Patterson
... portion of this should be intrusted to him who was amongst the first to move in this enterprise and to his colleagues?" The Brotherhood had hardly despatched this appeal to England with the sentence, "Our present incomes even are uncertain," when the shears of financial reduction cut off Dr. Carey's office of Bengali translator to Government, which for eight years had yielded him Rs. 300 a month. But such was his faith this final stroke called forth only an expression of regret that he must reduce his contributions to the missionary cause ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... laugh and cry at the same time. Right across from my window, on the street curbing, a Chinaman is getting a hair-cut. In the midst of all the turmoil, hissing bullets and roaring mobs, he sits with folded hands and closed eyes as calm as a Joss, while a strolling barber manipulates a pair of foreign shears. For him blessed freedom lies not in the change of Monarchy to Republic, but in the shearing close to the scalp the ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... should storm the place and make prisoners of the garrison. The conflict was a bloody one; the venerable gander on which the soldier laid his predaceous hands had nearly deprived him of his nose with its bill, hard and sharp as a tailor's shears. Then he caught it by the neck and tried to choke it, but the bird tore his trousers with its strong claws and pummeled him about the body with its great wings. He finally ended the battle by braining it with his fist, and it ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... which then ensued is dreadful to even reflect upon, after the lapse of so many years. Fodder backed into the street immediately, but he had accomplished the insult to O'Brallaghan. That gentleman ran out furiously, shears in hand, and with these instruments it seemed to be his intention to sever the epiglottis of Mr. Jinks, ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... none anywhere Under the earth or above the air?— Come, sad woman, whose tender throat Has a red-lipped mouth that can sing no note! Child, whose midwife, the third grim Fate, Shears in hand, thy coming did wait! Father, with blood-bedabbled hair! Mother, all withered with love's despair! Come, broken heart, whatever thou be, Hasten to help this misery! Thou wast only murdered, or left forlorn: He is a horror, a hate, a scorn! Come, if out ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... brown fur, and fastened by richly ornamented belts: their bows lay by their sides, while quivers of arrows were suspended to their girdles, and two spears, such as were used in the chase of the wild boar, lay by them on the grass. They had the same fair hair, which, untouched by the shears, hung negligently around neck and shoulder; the same blue eyes added an indescribable softness to the features; they had the same well-knit frames and agile movements, but yet there was a difference. The elder seemed possessed of greater vivacity of expression; ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... a glance which proclaimed an utter lack of interest, and plunged his shears into the editorial vitals of the Springfield Republican. Tommy Burt led ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... tradition had he kept inviolate? And, in his mood, that small matter of shortened hair meant as great and bitter surrender as it had meant to the Samson before him, whose mighty strength had gone out under the snipping of shears. What course was open to him now, except that of following the precedent of the other Samson, of pulling down the whole temple of his past? He was disowned, and could not return. He would go ahead with the other life, though at ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... for at least the next half-hour, when, the leaf-mould having been transported from the wood, he went round to the front of the house to trim the edges of the lawn. He was on his knees on the gravel path, busily engaged with a pair of shears, when he heard the amazing sound of the front door opening and shutting. He looked round over his shoulder, to see the same apparition that had appeared to him from the wood, walking calmly down the steps and in the direction of the drive. Apparently she was too engrossed with her own thoughts to ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... perfect Italian setting we should have stumbled on an Italian gardener, who whistles Verdi as he works. True, he doesn't know the flowers by name, and in his hands a pair of clippers are as fatal as the shears in the hands of Atropos, but he is in the picture. When I see gardeners pruning I realize that that lady of destiny shows wonderful restraint about our threads of fate—the temptation to snip ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... fitness in the receiver, he represents himself, in answer to the inquiries of Pentheus, not as Dionysus, but simply as the god's prophet, [69] in full trust in whom he desires to hear his sentence. Then the long hair falls to the ground under the shears; the mystic wand is torn from his hand, and he is led away to be tied up, like some dangerous wild animal, in a dark ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... happiness For my lord Roy Diaz that was born in a season of good grace. And now his beard was growing; longer it grew apace. For this the Cid had spoken, this from his mouth said he, "By my love for King Alphonso the king who banished me," That the shears should not shear it, nor a single hair dispart, That so the Moors and Christians might ...
— The Lay of the Cid • R. Selden Rose and Leonard Bacon
... Pruning Shears. These are very handy, and with them the work can be done quicker, and with less labor, as but a slight pressure of the hand will cut a strong vine. Fig. 22 will show the shape of one for heavy pruning. They are made by J. T. HENRY, Hampden, ...
— The Cultivation of The Native Grape, and Manufacture of American Wines • George Husmann
... to straighten out one's limbs, And leap elastic from the level counter, Leaving the petty grievances of earth, The breaking thread, the din of clashing shears, And all the needles that do wound the spirit, For such a pensive hour of soothing silence. Kind Nature, shuffling in her loose undress, Lays bare her shady bosom;—I can feel With all around me;—I can ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... this one a little. Remember this trunk must not go in the hold of the ship. Have it marked "Wanted" and "This end up." I will lie with my head this way. I'll put the shears in here, and I can cut another hole from the inside if ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Melodramatic Farce in Four Acts • Paul Dickey
... that stroke fall, and it must go hard with aught it struck. He springs forward, he louts low and sweeps upwards with Whitefire. Skallagrim sees the sword flare and drops almost to his knee, guarding his head with the axe; but Whitefire strikes on the iron half of the axe and shears it in two, so that the axe-head falls to earth. Now the Baresark is weaponless but unharmed, and it would be an easy task to slay him as he rushes by. But it came into Eric's mind that it is an unworthy deed to slay a swordless ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard
... securely pinned, cut out the gores, using long, sharp shears. Care should be taken not to lift the material from the table, not to have jagged, uneven edges, as both time and material will be wasted in straightening them. Open the shears as wide as possible, taking a long sweep of the material, and do not allow the points of the shears to ...
— Textiles and Clothing • Kate Heintz Watson
... ye forever ply, Life's nervous thread with care to twist, Till sound the clanging shears, and fruitlessly The tender ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... on the first evening; for when he put on his grandfather's coat, his mother planned a long while to see if there was not some way by which she could make it look better. Once she took the shears and was going to cut off the tail, but Paul stopped her. "I don't want it ...
— Winning His Way • Charles Carleton Coffin
... emblem of attenuation occurring in Al-Hariri (Ass. of Alexandria, etc.); also thin as a spindle (Maghzal), as a reed, and dry as a pair of shears. In the Ass. of Barka'id the toothpick is described as a beautiful girl. The use of this cleanly article was enjoined by Mohammed:—"Cleanse your mouths with toothpicks; for your mouths are the abode ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... shops are full. It is in the neatness of his 'shave' and the glossiness of his rich black cue that the Chinese dandy is distinguishable. Men who cannot afford to shave every day, allow the hair to grow until the head (always excepting the part which has never known the razor or the shears) resembles that of a fire zouave just after enlistment, or a penitentiary prisoner; while the exquisite has his head shaved with the sharpest razor, giving a bluish cast or frame for his yellow face. Occasionally the size or thickness ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... was duly measured and had given the tailor his promise to call for the garments at the expiration of five days, when the man of shears disturbed the serene current of his meditations by suggesting that the lieutenant should pay one half of the price ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic
... not her charms, which was undoing me. But the apoplexy, the bulging veins and the reddening eyes were forgotten when I sought relief by inserting the first two fingers of each hand on either side of my collar, and with a short, outward jerk, would open the starchy shears that were fastening like a constrictor around my air valves. This would startle the young creature into diffidence, and I always hated to do it, but it was the only way I could assume my self-control. Following ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... weavers tie the tufts of worsted that form the pile. This worsted, which has been dyed previously, hangs over their heads in balls. When a row of knots is finished, it is pressed down to the underlying woof by a long and heavy comb with metal teeth. Then the tufts are clipped close with shears, to make the pile. In the finer rugs there are seldom more than two, or at the most three, threads between every two rows of knots, but in the coarser kinds there are more threads. In many districts every family possesses a loom, and it ...
— Rugs: Oriental and Occidental, Antique & Modern - A Handbook for Ready Reference • Rosa Belle Holt
... one or two small scalpels, a kitchen paring-knife, an oil stone and can of oil, a hand drill, a fine fur-comb, one bone scraper, one small skin-scraper, one pair tinners' shears, one pair five and one-half inch diagonal wire cutters, one pair (same length) Bernard combination wire cutter and pliers, one pair small scissors, two or three assorted flat files, one hollow handle tool holder with tools and little saw, ...
— Taxidermy • Leon Luther Pray
... impossible to traffic undetected. But there must be a way out. There shall be! And will your excellency kindly let us see the cargo? I am sure there is much we sadly need: cloth, linen, cotton, boots, shoes, casks, bottles, glasses, plates, shears, axes, implements of husbandry, saws, sheep-shears, iron wares—have you ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... time, and was to the later Egyptians the very principle of evil—Evil personified. Another evil deity was Taour or Taourt, who is represented as a hippopotamus standing on its hind-legs, with the skin and tail of a crocodile dependent down its back, and a knife or a pair of shears in one hand. Bes seems also to have been a divinity of the same class. He was represented as a hideous dwarf, with large outstanding ears, bald, or with a plume of feathers on his head, and with a lion-skin down his back, often carrying in his two hands two knives. ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... answered Philip; "and how long do you think a finance minister must be in office before he can lay his shears on the flock to get wool enough ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various
... "Ye go and get some duds for me,—a shirt and the other pair of yer jeans. Crib Granny's shears to cut my hair off. Then we'll start. See? And we ain't never comin' back. Pappy Lon hates me, and he's licked ye all he's goin' to. Git along and crib ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... now, and with a finger at his lips the cook gave us a warning glance. He then laid hold of the rope that was made fast to a shears overhead, swung out, and slid down to the very keelson. Silently, one at a time, we followed. The only sound was our sibilant breathing and the very faint shuffle of feet. Now we could see, almost midway between the hatches, the dim light of ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... St. John was thoroughly interested in the strange boy whose growing musical pinions were ever being clipped by the shears of unsympathetic age and crabbed religion, and the idea of doing something for him to make up for the injustice of his grandmother awoke in her a slight glow of that interest in life which she sought only in doing good. But although ere long ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... in retaining as head groom an old dolt whom no sort of lever could move out of his old habits, and who was allowed to hire a succession of raw Loamshire lads as his subordinates, one of whom had lately tested a new pair of shears by clipping an oblong patch on Arthur's bay mare. This state of things is naturally embittering; one can put up with annoyances in the house, but to have the stable made a scene of vexation and disgust is a point beyond what ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... to be forgotten. Alari, too, offers a marvellously carved wooden cup, adorned with pastoral scenes. Veran owns a hundred white mares, whose manes, thick and flowing like the grass of the marshes, are untouched by the shears, and float above their necks, as they bound fiercely along, like a fairy's scarf. They are never subdued, and often, after years of exile from the salt meadows of the Camargue, they throw off their rider, ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... of shears, so joined that they cannot be separated; often moving in opposite directions, yet always punishing any one who comes ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... that the clear spirit doth raise (That last infirmity of noble minds) To scorn delights, and live laborious days; But the fair guerdon when we hope to find, And think to burst out into sudden blaze, Comes the blind fury with the abhorred shears, And slits the thin-spun life. But not the praise, Phoebus replied, and touched my trembling ears; Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil, Nor in the glistering foil Set off to the world, nor in broad rumor lies; ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... systematically and well arranged. Each shearer has a trap-door close to him, out of which he pushes his sheep as soon as the fleece is off, and there are little pens outside, so that the manager can notice whether the poor animal has been too much cut with the shears, or badly shorn in any other respect, and can tell exactly which shearer is to blame. Before this plan was adopted it was hopeless to try to find out who was the delinquent, for no one would acknowledge to the least snip. A good shearer can take off 120 fleeces in a day, but the ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... instrument, called the Scavenger's Daughter. Think of a pair of shears with handles, not only where they now are, but at the points as well, and just above the pivot that unites the blades, a circle of iron. In the upper handles the hands would be placed; in the lower, the feet; and through the iron ring, at the ...
— The Ghosts - And Other Lectures • Robert G. Ingersoll
... the yard, where a big hog had a corner to itself. She bade me observe that one of its ears had been slit half its length. It was because the hog was lazy, and little boys who were that way minded—zip! she clipped a pair of tailor's shears close to my ear. It was my first lesson in school. I hated it ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... on the mountain. Half-a- dozen chairs from the factory-man; half-a-dozen brooms from the other storekeeper at the Deepwater settlement; a carpet for the best room from the ladies of the township, who had clubbed forces to furnish it and a home-made concern it was, from the shears to ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... uninjured. I ordered a haircut, a shave, a shampoo and a face massage. I had much difficulty at first in making my wants understood, particularly as to the manner in which I wanted my hair cut. This finally made clear, I sat in the chair and the barber went to work on me with his sharp shears. His hands moved like lightning and it seemed like no more than two minutes that he had the job done. It was the fastest hair cutting I ever witnessed and a good job, too. He then proceeded to shave me, and for ...
— In the Flash Ranging Service - Observations of an American Soldier During His Service - With the A.E.F. in France • Edward Alva Trueblood
... wooden chair with a broken back, and the old man proceeded, with trembling hands, to cut his black locks with a pair of large shears, which he kept for ...
— Slow and Sure - The Story of Paul Hoffman the Young Street-Merchant • Horatio Alger
... flowers, bigger than his head, covered his shoulder, and ribbons fluttered to his feet The hemp-dresser, who was also the barber and hair-dresser of the district, had cut his hair evenly, by covering his head with a bowl, and clipping off the protruding locks, an infallible method for guiding the shears. Thus arrayed, the poor child was less poetic, certainly, than with his curls streaming in the wind, and his Saint John Baptist's sheepskin about him; but he knew nothing of this, and everybody admired ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... rock, Incessant bleatings run around the hills. At last, of snowy white, the gathered flocks Are in the wattled pen innumerous pressed, Head above head: and ranged in lusty rows, The shepherds sit, and whet the sounding shears. The Seasons: ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... three soldiers, which we borrowed from the guard stationed at that place. The path led along the shore, through clumps of myrtle beaten inland by the wind, and rounded as smoothly as if they had been clipped by a gardener's shears. As we approached the head of the gulf, the peaked summits of Giaour Dagh, 10,000 feet in height, appeared in the north-east. The streams we forded swarmed with immense trout. A brown hedgehog ran across our road, but when ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... kitchen she found her mother and the visitor cutting carpet rags. Old clothes were falling under the snip of the shears into a peach basket, ready to be sewn together, wound into balls and woven into rag carpet by the local carpet ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... section has done blooming, cut back each shoot to about two or three buds from its base. Small pieces of grass will periodically need mowing, and this ought to be done with a proper mowing-machine, as a pair of shears invariably causes an irregular and jagged after-growth. All unsightly vegetation, such as dead leaves or flowers, dried up stems, &c., must be promptly removed; weeds ought not to be allowed to grow a second pair of leaves—much less to flower—before being exterminated. Trailing and climbing ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... lay quiet between his feet, while the other men held theirs with difficulty and many struggles. The July sunshine seemed to hold the scene as it held the Marsh in a steep of shining stillness. The silence was broken by many small sounds—the clip of the shears, the panting of the waiting sheep and of the dogs that guarded them, and every now and then the sudden scraping scuttle of the released victim as it sprang up from the shearer's feet and dashed off to where ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... that only those who joined the community as sisters had their heads shaven, a strange expression flickered for an instant in her eyes, a fleeting reminiscence of that day, five-and-twenty years ago, when the shears had cropped their ruthless way through the glory of hair ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... clipped all around each year by the cows, as a hedge with shears, they are often of a perfect conical or pyramidal form, from one to four feet high, and more or less sharp, as if trimmed by the gardener's art. In the pastures on Nobscot Hill and its spurs, they make ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... film. The next picture was a sort of enlarged and elongated house fly, apparently, of sombre grey color, with a narrow body, thick proboscis and wings that overlapped like the blades of a pair of shears. "This," he went on, "is a picture of the now well known tse-tse fly found over a large area of Africa. It has a bite something like a horse-fly and is a perfect blood- sucker. Vast territories of thickly ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... distinctive outward sign of nobility in man, and perhaps the respect of that obsolete custom has left in the minds of most people a sort of unconscious tradition. However that may be, we all feel that in one direction, at least, a woman's sacrifice can go no further than in giving her head to the shears. ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford
... them. In May, he wrote to his mother and myself conjointly, fearing his former communications might not have reached us, and briefly recapitulating their purport. I afterwards heard at Deniliquin that he had successfully performed a surgical operation. A shearer had run the point of his shears into the neck of a sheep, and opened the carotid artery. My son having a small pocket case of instruments, secured the vessel and saved the animal. I remember when it was considered a triumph in practice to effect this on a human subject. The letter I am now ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... wandering about the garden snipping faded roses with Miss Emily's garden shears, when I saw Maggie coming swiftly toward me. When she caught my eye, she beckoned to me. "Walk quiet, Miss Agnes," she said, "and don't say I didn't warn you. ...
— The Confession • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... steal our necessaries; and so he right about, and peppered them, I tell you. Trav. "Mem. Yankees pepper pirates when they meet them." [Aloud.] Did you take them? Land. Yes, and my shear built this house. Trav. "Mem. Yankees build houses with shears." Land. It 's an ill wind that blows nowhere, as the saying is. And now, may I make so bold as to ask whose name I shall enter in my books? Trav. Mine! Land. Hem!—if it 's not an impertinent question, may I ask which way you are ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... who racks our souls with fears; This man and that she menaced, while she cried: "I clip the folk who harm thee with these shears!" ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... garment home and told my mother how I had bought it for cash in open competition with all the world. My mother and my aunt set to work with shears and needles and built me a suit of clothes out of the brown overcoat. It took a lot of ingenuity to make the pieces come out right. The trousers were neither long nor short. They dwindled down and stopped at ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... is just recognition of peace as the common interest of Europe, to be assured by disabling France. How shall this be done? The German Minister sees nothing but dismemberment, consecrated by a Treaty of Peace. With diplomatic shears he would cut off a portion of French territory, and, taking from it the name of France, stamp upon it the trade-mark of Germany. Two of its richest and most precious provinces, for some two hundred years constituent parts of the great nation, with that ...
— The Duel Between France and Germany • Charles Sumner
... the ice too. The Nelson, a big boat from Pittsburg was there with a big cargo, mostly of hardware—nails pretty much. There were several steamers that had come from down the Ohio. When the ice shut in, it cut the "Arcola" in two just as if it was a pair of shears and she a paper boat. She sank at once. It shoved the "Falls of St. Anthony" a good sized steamer way out of the water on the niggerheads. The "Pioneer" sank. It broke the wheels of the "Nelson" and another boat and put them out of commission. I stayed in my harbor ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... of the vine.—When, in the spring, "the grace of the green vine makes all the land lovely, and the shoots begin to wind and wave in the blue air," the husbandman comes in with pruning-hook and shears, and strips it bare of all its innocent pride. Nor is this all. Even in the vintage it is not allowed to glory in the results of the year, "the branches are torn down and trodden in the wine-press, while the vine stands stripped ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... his plan and then, bracing his feet firmly against the wall, he suddenly shot his lower limbs forward and, like the closing of a pair of giant shears, he wrapped his legs about the neck of the emissary and immediately exerted ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... the nursery shears Cut off both the baby's ears; At the baby, so unsightly, Mamma ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IX (of X) • Various
... their razors displayed. With their brushes, raising a mighty lather in their tin pots, they stood eyeing the passing throng of seamen, silently inviting them to walk in and be served. In addition to their usual implements, they now flourished at intervals a huge pair of sheep-shears, by way of more forcibly reminding the men of the edict which that day must be obeyed, ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... motionless, aged profile, transformed by the gray beard that had grown in a night; kneeling against the sloping pillow, her face buried in the white sheets, was a woman whose fair hair fell neglected about her shoulders, ready to fall under the shears of eternal widowhood; a priest, too, and a nun stood absorbed in meditation in that atmosphere of the death vigil, wherein the weariness of sleepless nights is blended with the mumbling of prayers and whispering in ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... improved manufacture of pruning shears, as hereinbefore described, that is, as composed of the blades, a b, the lever, C, the long shank, B, the lever, D, the open handles, C C', the arm, f, and the rod, g, arranged and combined in manner, and for the purpose, and to ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... teeth at the bunghole and told me that so bad boys were dealt with in school. At recess she had me up to the pig-pen in the yard as a further warning. The pig had a slit in the ear. It was for being lazy, she explained, and showed me the shears. Boys were no better than pigs. Some were worse; then—a jab at the air with the scissors told the rest. Poor father! He was a schoolmaster, too; how much sorrow it might have spared him had he known of this! ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... he put the "shears" in for, and he said he did it to rhyme. And then was the time, then and there, that I made him promise on the Old Testament, never to try to write a line of poetry agin. And I felt that he could not do himself ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... well spread his fair hide. He came to a spot, in a fair field, he had obtained a hide to his need, of a wild bull that was wondrously strong. He had a wise man, who well knew of craft, who took this hide, and laid it on a board, and whet his shears, as if he would shear. Of the hide he carved a thong, very small and very long, the thong was not very broad, but as it were a thread of twine; when the thong was all slit, it was wondrously long, about therewith he ...
— Brut • Layamon
... bottle of champagne, we quarrelled a little about the division of the estate. Lewis hauled and pulled the map on one side and Frog and I on t'other, till we had like to have tore the parchment to pieces. At last Lewis pulled out a pair of great tailor's shears and clipt a corner for himself, which he said was a manor that lay convenient for him, and left Frog and me the rest to dispose of as we pleased. We were overjoyed to think Lewis was contented with so little, not smelling what was at the bottom of the plot. There happened, indeed, an incident ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot
... Phantom Vessel To my Misery O Long the Way To the Fortune Seeker My Youth In the Wilderness I've Often Laughed Again I Sing my Songs Liberty A Tree in the Ghetto The Cemetery Nightingale The Creation of Man Journalism Pen and Shears For Hire A Fellow Slave The Jewish May The Feast of Lights Chanukah Thoughts Sfere Measuring the Graves The First Bath of Ablution ...
— Songs of Labor and Other Poems • Morris Rosenfeld |
