"Tongs" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was kindled in the forge, and on working the bellows a strong flame was produced. All our tools were composed of coral; two long pieces served as tongs, and another as a hammer. Having heated the iron, Dick knocked it out into a long thin bar, and then placing it on the mass of coral which served as an anvil, cut it with successive sharp blows of his knife into small pieces. ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston
... if you'd just like to go at him with 'hammer and tongs'"—doubling up her fists and striking out suggestively right and left—"for being so crusty with you about your religion? ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... commotion amongst the people. Not even the dog would touch the accursed thing. So at last the sheriff called for a pair of tongs, to seize the sticks himself and fling them into the fire. Whereupon his wife screamed to prevent him; but the brave sheriff, strengthening his heart, advanced and touched them; whereupon Fixlein, as if he had never known until ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... number of rails were placed upon a pile of ties it would be set on fire. This would heat the rails very much more in the middle, that being over the main part of the fire, than at the ends, so that they would naturally bend of their own weight; but the soldiers, to increase the damage, would take tongs and, one or two men at each end of the rail, carry it with force against the nearest tree and twist it around, thus leaving rails forming bands to ornament the forest trees of Georgia. All this work was going ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... particularly unbecoming. You begin to wonder at what time during the day it commenced to unbend, and if you have had that melancholy, damp appearance many hours. Perhaps it is as well that you did not know before, for it could not have been rectified; you cannot bring a pair of tongs and a spirit-lamp out of your pocket and begin operations in public! Still it is exceedingly aggravating if you think you have been making an impression, and you return home to confront such a dejected-looking spectacle as you find ...
— Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Girl - Sister of that "Idle Fellow." • Jenny Wren
... fine examples of Gothic carving, and several beautiful stained-glass windows. One in particular, which Monica pointed out, was in memory of a member of the Courtenay family. There was a chained Bible, besides a black-letter Prayer Book, a pair of tongs for turning dogs out of church, and several other curiosities shown by the old verger; so time passed rapidly, and everyone was quite surprised when Miss Russell looked at her watch, and announced that they must be ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... tell his honourableness that David Rossi and my wife are like brother and sister, and anybody who makes evil of that isn't stuff to take with a pair of tongs." ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... There's a board on the backstairs that squeaks, and I heard it plain, while you was still at me, hammer and tongs," Lydia answered. "He was in the house not more'n two minutes, all told, and when I figured he was safely out, I went upstairs with you to show you the presents I'd give Nita after she burnt me, to prove I'd ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... secure the doors. Alas! the bolts and bars were gone! Too late the warnings returned upon the king's mind, and he knew it was he alone who was sought. He tried to escape by the windows, but here the bars were but too firm. Then he seized the tongs, and tore up a board in the floor, by which he let himself down into the vault below, just as the murderers came rushing along the passage, slaying on their way a page named ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... one or more molds, the next operation is that of melting and pouring. An ordinary cast-iron glue-pot makes a good crucible and can be easily handled by a pair of tongs, made out of steel rod, as shown in the sketch. In order to hold the tongs together a small link can be slipped on over the handle, thus holding the ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... about 'em, as if that had anything to do with wages. It's my belief their priests put 'em up to it. People don't begin to reelize—that church of idolatry 'll be the ruin o' this country, if it ain't checked in time. Jest you go at 'em hammer 'n' tongs! I've got Eyetalians in the quarries now. They're sensible fellows: they know when they're well off—a dollar a day, an' they're ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... Anuile to worke vpon, and to vse a pickaxe in stead of a sledge to beate withall, and also to occupy two small bellowes in steade of one payre of greater Smiths bellowes. And for lacke of small Yron for the easier making of the nayles, they were forced to breake their tongs, grydiron, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... of suggesting to MR. ALBERT WAY that the utensil figured in page 179. of the above-mentioned work is not an ancient mustard-mill, but the upper part of an iron mould in which cannon-shot were cast. The iron tongs, of which a drawing is given in page 179., were probably useful for the purpose of drawing along a floor recently cast shot while they were too hot to ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 82, May 24, 1851 • Various
... important business, I forthwith set about my work. Selecting a piece of iron which I thought would serve my purpose, I placed it in the fire, and, plying the bellows in a furious manner, soon made it hot; then seizing it with the tongs, I laid it on my anvil, and began to beat it with my hammer, according to the rules of my art. The dingle resounded with my strokes. Belle sat still, and occasionally smiled, but suddenly started up, and retreated towards her encampment, on ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... and Garnet and Opal and Emerald, I can tell you you 'll have to mind your p's and q's. They won't stand any nonsense; they won't endure any silly speeches, but they 'll just go for you hammer and tongs. They 're boys, every one of them—and—and—we ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... tinsome Caroline, Unto such excess 'twould move me, Teazing, pleasing, cousin mine! That she might the live-long day Undermine the snuffer-tray, Tickle still my hooked nose, Startle me from calm repose With her pretty persecution; Throw the tongs against my shins, Run me through and through with pins, Like a pierced cushion; Would she only say she'd love me, Darning-needles should not move me; But, reclining back, I'd say, "Dearest! there's ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... position in an elm tree just outside the churchyard, where a large cluster of bees quickly depended from a bough. Being at a great height the cottager could not take them, and, anxious not to lose the swarm, he resorted to the ancient expedient of rattling fire-tongs and shovel together in order to attract them by the clatter. The discordant banging of the fire-irons resounded in the church, the doors being open to admit the summer air; and the noise became so uproarious that the clerk presently, at a sign from the rector, went ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... Straffords and principalities, etc., really the uncomfortablest acme of luxurious comfort that any Diogenes was set into in these late years." Thoreau's furniture at Walden consisted of a bed, a table, a desk, three chairs, a looking-glass three inches in diameter, a pair of tongs, a kettle, a frying-pan, a wash-bowl, two knives and forks, three plates, one cup, one spoon, a jug for oil, a jug for molasses, and a japanned lamp. There were no ornaments. He writes, "I had three pieces of limestone on my desk, but I was terrified to find that they required to be dusted daily, ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... work was of the crudest, the product of a sort of neolithic machine age. The distilling retort had been laboriously formed from sheet copper and clumsily riveted together. It leaked mightily as did the soldered seams on the hand-formed pipe. Most of the tools were blacksmith's tongs and hammers for heating and beating out shapes on the anvil. The only things that gladdened Jason's heart were the massive drill press and lathe that worked off the slave-power drive belts. In the tool holder of the lathe was clamped a chip of some ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey
... pretty well filled. The boy had, it seems, found a reef of these in a brackish arm which made inland, and dug them by the simple process of stooping down below the surface of the water, since he had no oyster tongs. ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... living and the dead contributed of their superfluity to supply the deficiency. Our ear-locks,—horresco referens!—my ears tingle and my countenance is distorted at the recollection of the tortures inflicted on them by the heated curling-tongs and crimping-irons. ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... school-house lane; The clover bees are sick with evening heats; A few old houses from the window-pane Fling back the flame of sunset, and there beats The throb of oars from basking oyster fleets, And clangorous music of the oyster tongs Plunged down in deep bivalvulous retreats, And sound of seine drawn home with ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... chalice (or, as another version of the legend says, a horseshoe) when the Devil appeared before him. Instantly recognising his enemy, and being aware that with such a foe prompt measures alone are useful, St. Dunstan at once pulled his nose with the tongs, which chanced happily to be red hot. Wrenching himself free, the Devil leaped at one bound from Mayfield to Tunbridge Wells, where, plunging his nose into the spring at the foot of the Pantiles, he "imparted to the water its chalybeate qualities," and thus made ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... excuse their cruelties by the example of Preachers, and professors of religion, and Northern citizens; Novel torture, eulogized by a professor of religion; Whips as common as the plough; Ladies use cowhides, with shovel and tongs. ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... upon strong wooden troughs, about six or eight feet square. There, negroes and negresses break it up with long poles armed with hard-wood head, trampling it under their delicate pettitoes to such an extent as to give rise to the question whether sugar-tongs are not a useless invention. When well smashed and trodden, it is packed in boxes, and starts forth on its journeys; a very large proportion goes to Spain. The two least pure portions are sent to Europe, to be there refined. Such is ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... struggled with your storyettes, I wrestled with my rhymes; Oh, we were happy, were we not?—we used to live so "high" (A little bit of broken roof between us and the sky); Upon the forge of art we toiled with hammer and with tongs; You told me all your rippling yarns, I sang to you my songs. Our hats were frayed, our jackets patched, our boots were down at heel, But oh, the happy men were we, although we lacked a meal. And if I sold a bit of rhyme, or if you placed a tale, What feasts we had of tenderloins and apple-tarts ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... was resumed where it had been left off, and almost immediately the rival teams were at work, "hammer and tongs," as one gentleman described it. Brilliant plays followed in rapid succession, each accompanied by a burst of applause, which was, however, instantly stilled, as though the crowd understood instinctively how it was necessary that they remain ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... Egyptians, by the name of Baal-Canaan, or Vulcan: for Vulcan was celebrated principally by the Egyptians, and was a King according to Homer, and Reigned in Lemnos; and Cinyras was an inventor of arts, [298] and found out copper in Cyprus, and the smiths hammer, and anvil, and tongs, and laver; and imployed workmen in making armour, and other things of brass and iron, and was the only King celebrated in history for working in metals, and was King of Lemnos, and the husband of Venus; all which are the characters of ...
— The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended • Isaac Newton
... replied old Wilders. "Only it can't be put off much longer. Unless I am greatly mistaken, to-morrow we shall be at it hammer and tongs." ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... Englishman and be a little bit human. You know, Underhill, confidence and pigheadedness are not even connected by marriage; much less are they blood relations. By Jove," he grinned, "you can tell him I'll stick him up against the ceiling if he insists upon handling me with the ice tongs and leave him there until you take him down; that is, if you care to ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... instrument like a pair of tongs, for old or very fat people to take any thing from the ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... and respectable friend, one who is better acquainted with Gypsy ways than the Chef de Bohemiens a Triana, one who is an expert whisperer and horse-sorcerer, and who, to his honour I say it, can wield hammer and tongs, and handle a horse-shoe, with the best of the smiths amongst the Alpujarras ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... from the picture to the fireplace. The shovel and tongs were just laughing at him; and though they composed their countenances immediately, he had caught the expression, and was excessively annoyed. Philosophy at length came to his aid, especially as the poker expressed only profound deference, preserving a martial attitude and immovable ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... lived in Montana ever sence he was five years old, and not having sighted salt water in all that time, he don't know but what there IS such critters as "Labrador mack'rel," and he goes at 'em, hammer and tongs. When we come ashore we had eighteen dogfish, four sculpin and a skate, and Stumpton was the happiest loon in Ostable County. It was all we could do to keep him from cooking one of them "mack'rel" with his own hands. If Jonadab hadn't steered him out of ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... continued her attentions: rather absurd they were. The sugar-tongs were too wide for one of her hands, and she had to use both in wielding them; the weight of the silver cream-ewer, the bread-and-butter plates, the very cup and saucer, tasked her insufficient strength and dexterity; but she ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... made known his uncle's distress, and when he ceased speaking, Captain Cuttle stepped forward, and clearing a space among the breakfast cups at Mr. Dombey's elbow, produced a silver watch, ready money to the amount of thirteen pounds and half a crown, two teaspoons and a pair of battered sugar-tongs, and piling them up into a heap, that they might look ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... there—working. And the twenty bellows blew into the crucibles and made bright and hot fires. Then Hephaistos threw into the fires bronze and tin and silver and gold. He set on the anvil-stand a great anvil, and took in one hand his hammer and in the other hand his tongs.' ...
— The Adventures of Odysseus and The Tales of Troy • Padriac Colum
... said Edmund Burgess, who had just come in to ask for a pair of tongs. "What wouldst say to the big hammer that none can ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... visible. The carpet was wrinkled and unswept; a clock on the table, in a glass frame, so streaked and spotted with dust as scarcely to be transparent, and the index motionless, and pointing at four instead of nine; embers scattered on the marble hearth, and tongs lying on the fender with the handle in the ashes; a harpsichord, uncovered, one end loaded with scores, tumbled together in a heap, and the other with volumes of novels and plays, some on their edges, some ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... carrying one ice cube on his shoulder, with another swinging from tongs. There was but one door to the Kilgour apartment and the girl and Dodd stood in front of it; they had evidently waited in the corridor after emerging from the elevator, and the young man was ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... had been dragged in by a horse, who drew them right up to the wide stone hearth. But we did not use Lord Beaconsfield for this work. For one thing, he would have been too big to get through the door; besides, we were strong, and liked the job. We had two pairs of ice-tongs, and we would put on our rubber boots, and take the tongs, and go out into the snow, and fasten to a log—one at each end—and drag it across Captain Ben's iron door-sill, and lift it in and swing it across the stout andirons with a skill that improved ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... tool for opening sheet metal cans, composed of a hand lever, B, carrying a tooth, c, and connected to tongs, A, or other equivalent means, capable of clamping said tooth-carrying lever to the ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... fighting at the point for a minute or two. Good old-fashioned cut and thrust, hammer and tongs, like cutting out a ship. Tom Strachan found himself, he did not know how, with the hilt of his sword right up against a Soudanese breast-bone, the weapon having passed right through the man's body. But there was no expression of pain in the dying face so close ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... landings. When the Point was shelled about the commencement of the war by the gunboats, the wharf was destroyed, the coal falling uninjured ten or twelve feet to the bottom of the river. We fished up our supplies with oyster tongs as they were needed, and our snug quarters were kept warm during the winter. Towards the end of the season, one of the mess servants lately arrived from the rural districts, was sent in the boat for a supply from the coal mine. He had made many a fire of ...
— The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner • John Wilkinson
... next. Sheets and towels, a little wearing apparel, two old-fashioned silver tea-spoons, a pair of sugar-tongs, and a few boots. Her account was stated on the wall ...
— A Christmas Carol • Charles Dickens
... pure guano. This test, to be accurate, must be done with a nice pair of scales and a platinum cup, which may be heated over a spirit lamp. Ten grains of the guano are placed in the platinum cup, which is held by the tongs in the flame of the spirit lamp for several minutes, until the greater part of the organic matter is burnt away. It is allowed to cool for a short time, and a few drops of a strong solution of nitrate of ammonia added, to assist in consuming the carbon in the residue. The ...
— Guano - A Treatise of Practical Information for Farmers • Solon Robinson
... him upon the spot—ay, if it were to have cost me a thousand dollars; he deserved it well, the dishonourable scamp! We were now in Trinity, we had done five miles in less than twelve minutes; but Miss Lambton was so angry, and the old gentleman so bitter cold and stiff—a pair of fire-tongs is nothing compared to him—Couldn't be helped, however. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... Endymion dropped the tongs with a clatter; picked them up, set them in place, and faced the room again with a flush which might have come from ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... I to myself it won't do for you to go on chopping at that rate, for when I fended off he made my whole hand tingle with the force of his blow; so I darts at him and drives the hilt of my cutlass right into his mouth, and he fell, and his own men trod him underfoot, and on we went, hammer and tongs. By this time the boarding of the launch and pinnace to leeward, for they could not get up as soon as we did, created a divarsian, and bothered the Frenchman, who hardly knew which way to turn; however, as there were more of our men on the other side, they most on 'em ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... who have eyes and the necessary faith. It is believed that he haunts the road-side even when the moon is not shining: consequently, when the crofters have to go out of doors at night, they protect themselves from his spells by carrying with them a blazing peat gripped with tongs. This smokes and sparkles in the darkness and the trow does not like it. It is easy for the electric-lighted citizens of Glasgow and Edinburgh to laugh at the simple folk-lore of fisher and crofter; but no one, however ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... reformatory enterprise. These outside activities were no hindrances to either pulpit or pastoral work; and, like that famous English preacher who felt that he could not have too many irons in the fire, I thrust in tongs, shovel, poker and all. The contact with busy life and benevolent labors among the poor supplied material for sermons; for the pastor of a city church must touch life at a great many points. Our domestic experiences in early housekeeping were very agreeable. The social conditions of New York were ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... were up in the white-house kitchen, where were also the reek of scorched hair and the laughing expostulations of the Little Doctor and the boyish titter of Pink and Irish, who were curling laboriously the chaps of Miguel with the curling tongs of the Little Doctor and those ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... singular to see: over Sussex, down to Pevensey where the Norman Bastard landed; I saw Julius Hare (whose Guesses at Truth you perhaps know), saw Saint Dunstan's stithy and hammer, at Mayfield, and the very tongs with which he took the Devil by the nose;—finally I got home again, a right wearied man; sent my horse off to be sold, as I say; and finished the writing of my Lectures on Heroes. This is all the rustication I have had, or am like to have. I am now over ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... him, you remember," she said. "I was going to take his head off. Then when it came to it, and I had told him what I thought of him and the whole disgraceful scrape he had got me into—Oh, I went for him, hammer and tongs! Incidentally, I made him tell me what it was I had said. Pretty bad, wasn't it!—Well, do you know, he cried, he felt so. He just cried on his knees, and didn't try to get rid of any of the blame. All he wanted was that I should forgive him. And what could I do? ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... as lions, and do not know what fear is; but unfortunately they are not always very clever, and Thomas is a little slow at learning, and does not pick up new tricks readily. His father had a tremendous hammer-and-tongs battle with the Dubois' watchman once, right in the middle of the public street—thirty-six rounds or so they had of it—and licked him, as John Bull says, in true British style; and that is always Thomas's ...
— The Casual Ward - academic and other oddments • A. D. Godley
... mastership, or of clothing, linen, and furniture, in the hired lodgings and workshops, no small sum was requisite for the purchase of different kinds of tools—a lathe, an anvil, crucibles, dies, graving-implements, steel pins, hammers, chisels, tongs, scissors, &c.; and also for the purchase of brass and pinchbeck ware, copper, silver, lead, quicksilver, varnish, brimstone, borax, and other things indispensable for labour. He had also taken, without premium, an apprentice, the child ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various
... dozen other questions hammered at her brain as she poured herself out a cup of tea. How she had once longed to be allowed to pour tea from that silver tea-pot, and pick up the sugar with those dainty little tongs, which granny would never allow her to touch. What a proud day it would be, so she used to think, when she might! But now—now that the day had come, she found no pride or pleasure in it, only a sort of shrinking. It seemed to ...
— Anxious Audrey • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... was obliged to draw in order to get at them. In his hand were his burning match and musket rest, and after discharging his piece he was obliged to defend himself with his sword. The match was fixed to the cock by a kind of tongs. Over the priming-pan was a sliding cover, which had to be drawn back with the hand before pulling the trigger. It was necessary to blow the ashes from the match, and take the greatest care that ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... occupations, never showed the least regret for the promise he had given not to renew his researches, he grew to have the melancholy motions, the feeble voice, the depression of a sick person. The ennui that possessed him showed at times in the very manner with which he picked up the tongs and built fantastic pyramids in the fire with bits of coal, utterly unconscious of what he was doing. When night came he was evidently relieved; sleep no doubt released him from the importunities of thought: ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... camlet and trimming as may be enough to make cushions for the chamber chairs. A good fine larger Chintz quilt, well made." This list also includes such items as kitchen utensils, warming pans, brass fenders, tongs, and shovels, and "four pairs of large ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster
... that?" replied Barbara, thrusting the charred book deeper into the fire with the tongs. Then pointing to her own forehead, she continued: "One often feels anxious about you. High-sounding words, such as we find in the Psalms, are not meant for every-day life and our kitchen. If you were my own son, you'd often have something to listen to. People who travel ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... was up the first of anybody and went and felt them, and found hers all lumpy with packages of candy, and oranges and grapes, and pocket-books and rubber balls, and all kinds of small presents, and her big brother's with nothing but the tongs in them, and her young lady sister's with a new silk umbrella, and her papa's and mamma's with potatoes and pieces of coal wrapped up in tissue-paper, just as they always had every Christmas. Then she waited around ...
— Christmas Every Day and Other Stories • W. D. Howells
... waiter came and placed the coffee things at his elbow. He didn't heed. The waiter poured a demi-tasse, and inquiringly lifted a lump of sugar in the silver tongs. Still Mr. Grimm didn't heed. At last the waiter deposited the sugar on the edge of the fragile saucer, and moved away as silently as he had come. A newspaper which Mr. Grimm had placed on the end of the table ...
— Elusive Isabel • Jacques Futrelle
... Agelan roars in my ear, and I nod assent. Now the hot stones are removed with bamboo tongs, and the great flat object, wrapped in banana leaves, is taken out. Mrs. Agelan throws back the leaves and uncovers the beautifully cooked golden lap-lap. Her lord looks at it critically, and returns to his corner silent, but evidently satisfied. His wife cannot ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... edition of my Formal Logic. I cannot expect the account in the Discussions to amuse an unconcerned reader as much as it amused myself: but for a cut-and-thrust, might-and-main, tooth-and-nail, hammer-and-tongs assault, I can particularly recommend it. I never knew, until I read it, how much I should enjoy a thundering onslought on myself, done with racy insolence by a master hand, to whom my good genius had whispered Ita feri ut se sentiat emori.[718] Since that time I have, as the Irishman said, become ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... papers were safe enough there, of course. The vase was a very beautiful and valuable silver one, and had its place of honor on that table. I could not stop to retrieve the question papers with a pair of tongs—as I might, had I not been hurried. When I returned armed with the tongs in ...
— Ruth Fielding At College - or The Missing Examination Papers • Alice B. Emerson
... the mantel-piece were encumbered, almost buried under a heterogeneous mass of things. Muslin petticoats, tossed down haphazard, pieces of lace, a cardboard helmet covered with gilt paper, open jewel-cases, bows of ribbon; curling-tongs, half hidden in the ashes; and on every side little pots, paint-brushes, odds and ends of all kinds. Behind two screens, which ran across the room, I could hear whisperings, and the buzzing sound peculiar to women dressing themselves. In one corner Silvani—the illustrious ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... their fervor was the Rev. Mr. Harding, who stopped in to see them several times upon his tramps. Thyrsis would never have dreamed of troubling Mr. Harding, but Corydon found "something in him", and would go at him hammer and tongs whenever he appeared. It must have been a novel experience for the clergyman; it seemed to fascinate him, for he came again and again, and soon quite a friendship sprang up between the two. She would tell Thyrsis about it at great length, and so, of course, he had to ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... and Aldrich have made one woman deeply and sincerely grateful —Mrs. Clemens. For months—I may even say years—she has shown an unaccountable animosity toward my necktie, even getting up in the night to take it with the tongs and blackguard it, sometimes also getting so ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... the window on horseback, and with a heavy sigh Mrs. Murray dropped her head on her hand, compressing her lips, and toying abstractedly with the sugar-tongs. ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... 'a people of unclean lips'?" And Isaiah heard God bid one of the seraphim touch his lips with a live coal as a punishment for having slandered Israel. Though the coal was so hot that the seraph needed tongs to hold the tongs with which he had taken the coal from the altar, the prophet yet escaped unscathed, but he learned the lesson, that it was his duty to defend Israel, not traduce him. Thenceforth the championship of his people ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... understand this very well, but he was surprised to see his roll flying off in that manner. He immediately took two sticks, and tried to take up the roll with them, as one would with a pair of tongs; but he could not ...
— Caleb in the Country • Jacob Abbott
... and the police force into bottles of Harvey's sauce. Tried to squeak, but couldn't. Then I imagined that I was changed into the devil, and that Alderman Harmer was St. Dunstan, tweaking my nose with a pair of red-hot tongs. This time, I think, I did shout lustily. Awoke with the fright, and found my wife pulling my nose vigorously, and calling me "My Lord!" Pulled off my nightcap, and began to have an idea I was somebody, but could not tell exactly who. Suddenly ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... of retiracy during the night-capped periods of existence. A bare floor supported two narrow iron beds, spread with thin mattresses like plasters, furnished with pillows in the last stages of consumption. In a fire place, guiltless of shovel, tongs, andirons, or grate, burned a log inch by inch, being too long to to go on all at once; so, while the fire blazed away at one end, I did the same at the other, as I tripped over it a dozen times a day, and flew up to poke it a dozen times at night. ...
— Hospital Sketches • Louisa May Alcott
... ink-stand, a piece of deal, lately part of the lid of a box, with many chips, and a handsome razor that had been used as a knife. There were bottles of soda-water, sugar, pieces of lemon, and the traces of an effervescent beverage. Two piles of books supported the tongs, and these upheld a small glass retort above an argand lamp. I had not been seated many minutes before the liquor in the vessel boiled over, adding fresh stains to the table, and rising in fumes with a disagreeable odor. Shelley snatched the glass quickly, and dashing ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... or the same proportion of nitric). This extracts the gelatine from the surface of the ivory. Extreme cleanliness and absence of grease or soiling is most important; the ivory is not to be touched by the fingers, but removed from one vessel to another by wooden tongs, one pair to each colour. After treating with the acid, place the ivory in clean, cold, boiled water for some minutes. Water stains are used, but strained or filtered and warm or only tepid, for fear of injuring the surface of the ivory. Increasing the temperature also sometimes deepens ...
— Intarsia and Marquetry • F. Hamilton Jackson
... Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts. 6. Then flew one of the seraphims onto me, having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar: 7. And he laid it upon my mouth, and said, Lo, this hath touched thy lips; and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged. 8. Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... in the shadows of that empty floor, and I remember backing away from the door and standing in the center of the room, prepared for some stealthy, murderous assault. When none came I looked about for a weapon, and finally took the only thing in sight, a coal-tongs from the fireplace. Armed with that, I made a cursory round of the near-by rooms but there was no ...
— Sight Unseen • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... hateful man! 'Twould vex a saint! Around my pretty, cherished book, The odor vile, the noisome taint Of horrid, stale tobacco-smoke Yet lingers! The hateful man, my book to spoil! Patrick, the tongs—lest I should soil ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... novelists there are many like him in what I will roundly term intellectual sluggishness, though there is, perhaps, none with quite his talent. Have these men entered into a secret compact not to touch a problem even with a pair of tongs? Or are they afraid of being confused with Hall Caine, Mrs. Humphry Ward, and Miss Marie Corelli, who anyhow have the merit of being interested in the wide aspects of their age? I do not know. But I think we might expect ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... 'did anybody tell you to say all this?' and I said 'No,' because my mistress had instructed me. She taught me on shipboard what to say if I was taken to court. She beat me with thick sticks of firewood. She beat me with the fire tongs. One day she took a hot flatiron, removed my clothes and held it on my naked back until I howled with pain. (The scab was on her back when she came to the Mission.) My forehead is all scars caused by her throwing heavy pieces of wood at my head. One cut a ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... trimming, my pretty Miriam," she said, shaking her head, "if you really believe this. They never forgive superiority, assumed or real; none but the noble ones, I mean; who, of course, are in the minority. Give a pair of tongs pantaloons, and it asserts itself. Trousers, my dear, are at the root of manly presumption. I discovered that long ago. A man in petticoats would be as humble as a woman. This is my theory, at least; take it for what it is worth. And now to sleep, ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... himself in his deep chair, whose rounded back screened him from draughts, he looked round him doubtfully, examined his dressing-gown with a hostile expression, shook off a few grains of snuff, carefully wiped his nose, arranged the tongs and shovel, made the fire, pulled up the heels of his slippers, pulled out his little queue of hair which had lodged horizontally between the collar of his waistcoat and that of his dressing-gown restoring it to its perpendicular position; then he swept up the ...
— The Ball at Sceaux • Honore de Balzac
... unless she is "flyin' roun'"; and whenever there is a great tumult in the kitchen, pans kicked about, tongs falling, dishes rattling, and table shoved over the floor, something pretty good, in the shape either of a bonne-bouche or a bon-mot, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... from her feet to the fireplace and caught the iron tongs with which they were wont to place pieces of wood upon the fire. She struck him a hard blow upon the arm between the ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... love with her; or if he is not, he ought to be. She is such a perfect little woman of her kind. She reminds me of a pair of old-fashioned silver sugar-tongs; you know I am very fond of sugar. And she is very nice with Mr. Brand; I have noticed that; ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... years. That's what I call living! I never have to look for a single thing, not even my slippers. Always a good fire, always a good dinner. Once the bellows annoyed me, the nozzle was choked up; but I only mentioned it once, and the next day Mademoiselle gave me a very pretty pair, also those nice tongs you see me ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... me and Mother—me a-twistin' at the prongs Of a green scrub-ellum forestick with a vicious pair of tongs, And Mother sayin', "DAVID! DAVID!" in a' undertone, As though she thought that I was ...
— Riley Farm-Rhymes • James Whitcomb Riley
... and finding out the nabob's dwelling, I went and rappit at the door, which a bardy flunkie opened, and speer't what I want it, as if I was a thing no fit to be lifted off a midden with a pair of iron tongs. Like master, like man, thought I to myself; and thereupon, taking heart no to be put out, I replied to the whipper-snapper—'I'm Bailie M'Lucre o' Gudetown, and maun hae a word ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... the fire in their sitting-room at St. Elgiva's, in that blissful interval between preparation and supper, when nothing very intellectual was expected from them, and they might amuse themselves as they wished. Irene, squatting on the rug, was armed with the tongs, and kept poking down the miniature volcanoes that arose in the coal; Elsie luxuriated in the rocking-chair all to herself; while Francie and Sylvia—a tight fit—shared the big basket-chair. In a corner three chums were coaching each other in the speeches for a play, and a group ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... the old buffer would marry," he muttered, after about half an hour's revery. Alicia and my lady, the stepmother, will go at it hammer and tongs. I hope they won't quarrel in the hunting season, or say unpleasant things to each other at the dinner-table; rows always ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... whatever at providing a secret retreat in case of fire, though I had a plan in mind which I thought was good. Worst of all, I left the Winchesters about here and there without any particular attempt at hiding them. But I kept at the tunnel hammer and tongs. ...
— Track's End • Hayden Carruth
... on the mantel-shelf and, when he had found it, lit it with a coal which he picked out of the fire with the tongs. ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... that had enabled these youngsters to make a good showing. A new-style device for women, consisting of heater and tongs for curling the hair, was on the market this year. Electric current was required for the heater, but both Laura and Belle had electric light service in their homes. This new-style device was one of the fads of this Christmas season. The retail price was eight dollars per outfit, and a ...
— The High School Pitcher - Dick & Co. on the Gridley Diamond • H. Irving Hancock
... Idalian groves, And leads her gold-hair'd family of Loves. These, from the flaming furnace, strong and bold Pour the red steel into the sandy mould; On tinkling anvils (with Vulcanian art), 160 Turn with hot tongs, and forge the dreadful dart; The barbed head on whirling jaspers grind, And dip the point in poison for the mind; Each polish'd shaft with snow-white plumage wing, Or strain the bow reluctant to its string. 165 Those on light pinion twine with busy hands, Or stretch from ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... the slamming of a door and a healthy footfall across the room. The piano is opened. Then some occasional noises—the falling of a piece of music behind the piano, perhaps, and its extraction by means of the tongs—I know it is tongs she uses by the clang. Then the music-stool creaks, and La Belle Dame is ready to play. She puts both her hands upon the key-board, and the treble shrieks apprehensively, and the bass roars like a city in revolt. After that ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells
... was required to get a stove, wood, linen, and who knows what else. Though for a month I have believed myself established, I am always on the eve of being so. Here a cart takes five hours to go three leagues; judge of the rest. They require two months to manufacture a pair of tongs. There is no exaggeration in what I say. Guess about this country all I do not tell you. For my part I do not mind it, but I have suffered a little from it in the fear of seeing my children suffer much ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... visitor, Angus MacAlister Ban, whose grandson told the tale, had more experience of the bocan's reality. "Something seized his two big toes, and he could not get free any more than if he had been caught by the smith's tongs. It was the bocan, but he did nothing more to him." Some of the clergy, too, as well as laymen of every rank, were witnesses to the pranks which the spirit carried on, but not even Donald himself ever saw him in any shape whatever. ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... his leisure, ascending the steep path from the beach, and an exceedingly sweet and dainty figure it would have appeared, even to eyes less susceptible than those of twenty. Sea- water—I stand open to correction—is not, I believe, considered anything of a substitute for curling tongs, but to the hair of the youngest Miss Evans it had given an additional and most fascinating wave. Nature's red and white had been most cunningly laid on, and the large childish eyes seemed to be searching the world for laughter, ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... know how to take care of yourself. Still, maybe you don't realize how set up he'd be over being noticed by a girl in your position. And if you gave him the notion that there was a chance for him to marry you, he'd be after you hammer and tongs. The idea of getting hold of so ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... did not realize what he had done. By the time she reached the hearth the paper was already half consumed. She made a snatch at it with the tongs, but a flame sprang up and forestalled her. She had just time to read the words "last Will and Testament of me Har—" before the whole sank into ashes. She turned to her brother with ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... King reply, As another glance he throws: "'Gainst the shield I ill shall fight Which the tongs and hammer shows. ...
— Ulf Van Yern - and Other Ballads • Thomas J. Wise |
