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Tool   Listen
verb
Tool  v. i.  To travel in a vehicle; to ride or drive. (Colloq.) "Boys on their bicycles tooling along the well-kept roads."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Tool" Quotes from Famous Books



... matter drop with the girls, but going to the schoolroom, she inquired into it more fully, and found that by poor unfortunate faithful Morley's own account, she had allowed herself to be made the tool of the curiosity of Caroline and Clara. She spoke severely, and Miss Morley had displeasure to endure, which was considerably more disagreeable than all Clara's ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... public purpose, or to accept from friendship the pecuniary aid which would abase him into the hireling of a cause. No! Victor de Mauleon despises too much the tools that he employs to allow any man hereafter to say, 'Thou also wert a tool, and hast ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... is man: he takes the lines That Fortune's cutting tool designs. To press the wounds wherewith she graves us, Racks us ...
— Laments • Jan Kochanowski

... artist, when he was a young man, painted an unusual picture of Jesus. He represented him as a little boy in the home at Nazareth. He has cut his finger on some carpenter's tool, and comes to his mother to have it bound up. The picture is really one of the truest of all the many pictures of Jesus, because it depicts just such a scene as ofttimes may have been witnessed in his youth. Evidently there was nothing in his life in Nazareth ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller

... subject, from both a political and a social point of view. In his eyes, etiquette had the great advantage of drawing between him and those who had recently been his superiors, a distinct line of separation. He looked upon it as a useful tool of government, as an accompaniment of glory absolutely essential for a sovereign, especially for one of recent origin. He was very proud of his court, of the wealth it displayed, and of the vast results he obtained at a comparatively small expense, and at Saint Helena ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand

... resigned? It was a cruel mistake, but it might have been worse, for hearts are deceitful, and what is false and baneful is apt to prove an edge-tool. Here was permanent estrangement, comfortless formality, cold, compulsory esteem; but there was no treachery in the household, no malignant hate, no ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler

... pleasures are kept secret. But what the author says of its happiness, seems applicable only to fatuity, or gross dulness; for that inferiority of understanding, which makes one man, without any other reason, the slave, or tool, or property of another, which makes him sometimes useless, and sometimes ridiculous, is often felt with very quick sensibility. On the happiness of madmen, as the case is not very frequent, it is not necessary to raise a disquisition, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson

... cooked. In a very short time the box was so nearly done that it only wanted a little more chipping out with an axe; but this part of the work was easier accomplished indoors, and he called to one of his sons who were lounging inside to bring him the tool. ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Various

... to know where the fuses are so I can flag the first train that comes. Or I will just set the tool house afire; that will ...
— Sunny Slopes • Ethel Hueston

... Sid Norman, for, without lifting a hand, or using any other tool than a keen eye and a sharp tongue, he had wrought out before him, carved as in cold marble, the statue of a beautiful, bad woman. Such is genius. Such ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... to stare at the leaf. It had been scratched or rather written upon with a sharp tool, such as a nail, and wherever this instrument had touched it, the acid juice oozing through the outer skin had turned a rusty blood colour. Presently I found the beginning of the scrawl, and read this in English, and covering the surface of the leaf and ...
— Maiwa's Revenge - The War of the Little Hand • H. Rider Haggard

... of the room where it can be approached on all sides, as will often be necessary. The double top, drawers, and shelf should be a part of the larger table also. Usually the table is kept in front of the window with tool racks and shelves for small articles each side of the same where ...
— Home Taxidermy for Pleasure and Profit • Albert B. Farnham

... logic; remember that reason, (Vernunft,) the purest that Kant ever criticized withal, is not the proper vital soul in man; is not the creative and productive faculty in intellect at all, but is merely the tool of that which, in philosophers no less than in poets, is the proper inventive power, IMAGINATION, as Wordsworth phrases it: Schlegel's word is fantasie. Remember that in more cases than academic dignities may be willing to admit, the heart (where a man has one) is ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various

... exact expression used, M'riar," said Uncle Mo, who was doing something with a tool-box at the door that opened on the front-garden that opened on the Court. Dolly was holding his tools, by permission—only not chisels or gouges, or gimlets, or bradawls, or anything with an edge to it—and the sunflower outside was watching them. ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... importance. You are acquainted with my situation, but not all my weaknesses. I was hurt, in the early part of my life, by the envenom'd tongue of scandal, and ever since, I own, have no joy but in sullying the fame of others. In this I have found you an apt tool: you have often been the instrument of my revenge, but you must now assist me in a softer passion. A young widow with a little beauty and easy fortune is seldom driven to sue,—yet is that my case. Of the many you have seen here, have ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore

... Adventurers, he became a graceless ingrate and rascal. An instrument of good at first, he became a heartless and designing enemy of the Planters. He was a "citizen and merchant [ironmonger] of London." It is altogether probable that he was originally a tool of Sir Ferdinando Gorges and was led by him to influence the Leyden brethren to break off negotiations with the Dutch. He died poor, ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames

... that a considerable time must unavoidably elapse, before he can acquire, how great soever his abilities, that fund of local information which can alone qualify him for his situation. In the mean while it is ten to one but he becomes the tool of one or other of his clerks, who are for the most part convicts; and thus the principal acts of the governor, which from the confidential nature of his office are necessarily very materially influenced ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth

... weird magician, weary of the world, In sullen humor locked his charms all up Within a diamond casket, firmly clasped, And threw the key into the sea, and died. The manikins here tried with all their might; In vain! no tool can pick the flinty lock; His magic arts still slumber, like their master. A shepherd's child, along the sea-shore playing, Watches the waves, in hurrying, idle chase. Dreaming and thoughtless, as young maidens are, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... as you had both got out at Pepinster Blythe slipped into the compartment, broke the lock of the bag with a special tool we call 'the snipper,' and had the papers in a moment. These he passed on to me, and travelled past Liege ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux

... an axe or hatchet, however crude it may have been, would naturally lead to another step in advance. With it the ancestral man had passed beyond the possession of a weapon into the possession of a tool. The shaping of his clubs previously had been done by a rude tearing or hammering off of their twigs. These could now be cut off, and in addition the club might be wrought into a better shape. Manufacture had begun. Our ancestor stood at one end of a long line, at the other end of which we behold ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris

... spirit is given us to apprehend spiritual things, and that to disregard the spirit in spiritual matters, and to trust to reason is as foolish as if a carpenter, about to begin a piece of work, were deliberately to reject his keenest and sharpest tool. The methods of mental and spiritual knowledge are entirely different. For we know a thing mentally by looking at it from outside, by comparing it with other things, by analysing and defining it, whereas we can know a thing spiritually only by becoming ...
— Mysticism in English Literature • Caroline F. E. Spurgeon

... Turkish artillery brought down a biplane flying over Yent Shehr and Kum Kaleh, and on the previous day a reconnoitering and bombing expedition was undertaken by a Turkish seaplane, which dropped bombs on the harbor tool house at Mudros. ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)

... superiors, or made by any circumstance convenient to be done; our Christian liberty consists in this, that we have leave to do them. And, indeed, it is so far from being a sin, that it would be so to refuse so to do.' Could the state have selected a fitter tool ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... War few Americans thought seriously of studying the Negro in the sense of directing their efforts toward an acquisition of knowledge of the race as one of the human family; and this field was not more inviting to Europeans, for the reduction of the Negro to the status of a tool for exploitation began in Europe. The race did receive attention from pseudo-scientists, a few historians pointed out the possibilities of research in this field, and others brought forward certain interesting sketches of distinguished Negroes ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various

... hammer on the anvil, in pieces of equal length, as though he had been gently breaking pieces of glass. Then he put the pieces back into the fire, from which he took them one by one to work them into shape. He was forging hexagonal rivets. He placed each piece in a tool-hole of the anvil, bent down the iron that was to form the head, flattened the six sides and threw the finished rivet still red-hot on to the black earth, where its bright light gradually died out; and this with a continuous ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola

... of the country followed him, with a similar object, to the settlement. "When we left Patuona's village," says he, "we were more than fifty in number, most of them going for an axe or a hoe, or some small edge-tool. They would have to travel, by land and water, from a hundred to a hundred and forty miles, in some of the worst paths, through woods, that can be conceived, and to carry their provisions for their journey. A chief's ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik

... no swearing, nor laughing, nor loud altercations. The place compelled quiet and decency, and disposed one for tranquil, serious thoughts. Absorbed in our work, we stood or sat immovably, like statues; there was a dead silence, very proper to a cemetery, so that if a tool fell down, or the oil in the lamp spluttered, the sound would be loud and startling, and we would turn to see what it was. After a long silence one could hear a humming like that of a swarm of bees; in the porch, in ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff

... aloud." He held the paper up and read, "Apropos of your present conference with Dr. Titus, it may please the General Staff to learn that the Russian Communist Party newspaper, Pravda, has just denounced the newspaper of the Red Army, Izvestia, as a tool of the decadent, warmongering, capitalist ruling circles of the imperialist Western bloc. Other evidence of severe internal upheaval of a nature favorable to the West is pouring in through news channels and being confirmed by State and CIA sources. ...
— I Was a Teen-Age Secret Weapon • Richard Sabia

... waist, a wolfer's "feeler", three strands of wire twisted into a pliable cable ten feet long, the three ends of the strands extending forklike a bare two inches beyond the cable braid at one end. This simple invention eliminates much tedious excavation work, the sensitive tool following the curves of the branching tunnels which each wolf pup makes for himself as soon as he is able to dig. Shady prowled along the edge of the timber and viewed these ...
— The Yellow Horde • Hal G. Evarts

... brought up another wire, to the end of which were attached two small anchors and some pieces of scrap steel from the tool room. ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht • Edward Stratemeyer

... keep it than strenuous industry at its anvil? How better express its craft school, its local style and skill, its reaction too upon the town's life in peace and war, than by this Hal o' the Wynd by his forge? Nay, what better symbol than this hammer, this primitive tool and ever typical one, of the peaceful education of experience, form Prometheus to Kelvin, of the warlike, from Thor to modern cannon-forge? Turning now from Town and School to Cloister, to the life of secluded peace and ...
— Civics: as Applied Sociology • Patrick Geddes

... conversation might have been a replica of the letters we had discovered. Even when she hinted politely, but finally, that the talk was over she left me in doubt even whether she was an adventuress. The woman was an enigma. Had revenge or jealousy brought her to New York, or was she merely a tool ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve

... thrust his modeling tool up to the handle into the clay. "Say it outright! You have been a great fool ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James

... telling is a most excellent method of advertising the good books of the world. I shall consider it as a means of advertising books from the librarian's point of view, and treat it simply as a library method, calling it, if you will let me, a library tool. ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine

... was visited also upon all associated with Bonaparte in the conduct of affairs at that time. Murat was "a brute and a thief"; Josephine, Hortense, Pauline, and Mme. Letitia were courtesans; Berthier was a shuffling, time-serving lackey and tool; Augereau was a bastard, a spy, a robber, and a murderer; Fouche was the incarnation of every vice; Lucien Bonaparte was a roue and a marplot; Cambaceres was a debauchee; Lannes was a thief, brigand, and a poisoner; Talleyrand and Barras were—well, what evil was ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field

... people, and have strange inverted ways of doing things. It is said that they use a saw with an upward pressure instead of a downward one, that they plane a deal board by pulling the tool toward them instead of pushing it, and that in building a house they first construct the roof and, having raised that into position, proceed to work downwards. In money the currency of the country consists ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney

... our people when they found them single, so our men durst not go abroad single, for fear of being surrounded with their numbers. The best was they had no weapons; for though they had bows, they had no arrows left, nor any materials to make any; nor had they any edge-tool among them. The extremity and distress they were reduced to was great, and indeed deplorable; but, at the same time, our men were also brought to very bad circumstances by them, for though their retreats were preserved, yet their provision was destroyed, ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe

... darlin', that when we'd settle off the jidges, an' lawyers, an' sheriffs, an' bailiffs, that we'd allow the jails or the gibbets to stan', or the hangmen to live. No, by japers, we'd make a clane sweep of it; and when sich a man as Purcel becomes a tool in the parsons' hands to grind the people, I don't see that we ought to make fish of one an' flesh of ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... white and not congruous with its surroundings, is perched above the road on a terrace under Le Roc Perce, so named from a natural cavern, very round, drilled through it, as though wrought by a giant's boring tool. ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould

... they ought not to be encumbered with domestic establishments in time of war, Turkey just then being at open war with England. He also made use of this opportunity to get rid of people who displeased him, among others, of a certain Ismail Pacho Bey, who had been alternately both tool and enemy, whom he made secretary to his son Veli, professedly as a pledge of reconciliation and favour, but really in order to despoil him more easily of the considerable property which he possessed at Janina. Pacho was not deceived, and showed his resentment openly. ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... as are so constructed, that not only initial letters of the lines, but also the middle or last letters, form words. For example:—-1. By Apollo was my first made. 2. A shoemaker's tool. 3. An Italian patriot. 4. A tropical fruit. The initials and finals, read downwards, give the name of a writer and his nom de plume. Answer: ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... purple-breasted Gallinule Why should thy beauty cause thee fear? Why should the huntsman seek to fool Thy innocence, and bring thee near His deadly tool of fire and lead? Thou holdest high thy stately head! Would that the hunter might consent To leave thee in thy sweet content.—C. ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [April, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various

... divorced from workmanship, is necessarily unreal, and quickly falls into affectation. Proper ornamentation may be defined as a language addressed to the eye; it is pleasant thought expressed in the speech of the tool. ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall

... certain conviction that it could not be a woman who broke her house. "I have no doubt that I may find some of my own things there," added she, "but, if they were found in her possession, she has been made a tool, or the dupe, of an infernal set, who shall be nameless here. I believe she did not rob me, and for that reason I will have ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg

... naturally "condemns" Aphrodite, as it "condemns" Helen. But Homer is lenient; Helen is under the spell of the Gods, an unwilling and repentant tool of Destiny; and Aphrodite, too, is driven by Zeus into the arms of a mortal. She is [Greek text], shamefast; and her adventure is to her a bitter sorrow (199, 200). The dread of Anchises—a man is not long of life who ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang

... in the most outrajus stile. Iago falls in with a brainless youth named Roderigo & wins all his money at poker. (Iago allers played foul.) He thus got money enuff to carry out his onprincipled skeem. Mike Cassio, a Irishman, is selected as a tool by Iago. Mike was a clever feller & orficer in Otheller's army. He liked his tods too well, howsever, & they floored him, as they have many other promisin young men. Iago injuces Mike to drink with him, Iago slyly throwin his whiskey over his ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne

... be few and to the point," Fremont began, his clear penetrating voice reaching every ear in the crowd. "Skoonly will confess everything, if you will spare his neck. He appears to have been but the tool of the other two men; and we will need his testimony to make out a case against them and to prove to the satisfaction of all, the innocence of the two boys. Under these circumstances, it would seem to be ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil

... was but a tool in Antipater's hands, he never attempted to depose him, and apparently always treated him with respect. To steer successfully through the stormy period during which Rome made the transition from the republican to the monarchical form of ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent

... twilight. The evening of the second day after leaving the Gila, Kit and his three compadres rode into Gage. One or two significant passes with a six-shooter hypnotized the station agent into a docile tool. A dim red light glimmered away off in the east. As the minutes passed, it grew and brightened fast. Then a faint, confused murmur came singing over the rails to the ears of the waiting bandits. The light brightened and grew until it ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson

... a strange letter. What does it mean? Are you playing false to me? Who is this man you have with you? where does he come from? Are you such a fool as not to know he is a tool of the Adams, and that you are acting with him? I cannot be with you. If I had my liberty I would hurry to your side, snatch you from this villain, and plunge my knife so deep into him that he would never know he had received a blow!!! Why are you so foolish? Do you love ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton

... simulations with design tools such as computer-aided design (CAD) programs and physics-based simulations presents a new type of tool referred to as simulation-based design. Once fully realized, this capability will allow new technologies to be much more easily evaluated, introducing a source for greater efficiency into ...
— Shock and Awe - Achieving Rapid Dominance • Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade

... was still visiting Woodbine Villa, as related above, events of a very different character from those soft scenes were taking place at the works. His liberal offer to the Edge-Tool Forgers had been made about a week, when, coming back one day from dinner to his forge, he found the smoky wall written upon with chalk, ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade

... stupor of slumber dulled her hearing, and she struggled to catch again the sound that had awakened her. From somewhere across the hall she heard a faint click, click, which sounded as though some mechanic's tool were being used. ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White

... to his mother, and sits down on a stool, sets a tool-bag between his knees, and speaks in a ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... other scripture; But yet, in the stead of God Almighty, They honour the sun for his great light, For that doth them great pleasure; Building nor house they have none at all, But woods, cots, and caves small, No marvel though it be so, For they use no manner of iron, Neither in tool nor other weapon, That should help them thereto: Copper they have, which is found In divers places above the ground, Yet they dig not therefore; For, as I said, they have none iron, Whereby they should ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley

... is not so honest a man as your son," answered the general; "Mr Lerew was about to take orders, and would prove a useful tool, while it was more prudent to secure your son at once, as he, it was supposed, would inherit your property. I wish that I could offer you consolation; but I fear that you would consider me a Job's comforter ...
— Clara Maynard - The True and the False - A Tale of the Times • W.H.G. Kingston

... was to be bound by such decisions; and the referees themselves, aware of the probable result, refused to accept the office. The great object of his policy was the preservation of the ascendency which he had acquired. To Henry, who was now the convenient tool of his ambition, he paid every exterior demonstration of respect, but never suffered him to depart out of his custody; and, without consulting him, affixed his seal to every order which was issued for the degradation of the royal authority. The King of the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various

... which is to cause the tube to break at that point, and the break is more likely to give a good square end. The scratch should be made by passing part of the knife or file once across the glass, never by "sawing" the tool back and forth. This latter procedure dulls the ...
— Laboratory Manual of Glass-Blowing • Francis C. Frary

... thieves, whose case was hopeless from the beginning, but the prosecution experienced some difficulty in obtaining evidence to connect Fletcher definitely with them, though several facts suggested that he had for some time acted as a tool in their hands. The court was crammed, and looking down on the sea of faces I could recognize a number of my neighbors from the Fairmead district and Carrington, and was not overjoyed to see them. An attempt to steal a large draft of cattle was an important event on the prairie. I ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss

... gleamed upon the hands of the stable clock, and warmed the ancient heart of the stooping, grey-haired old gardener's help who, with blinking eyes and hands tucked in his trousers pockets, was smoking a matutinal pipe, seated on the wheelbarrow outside the tool shed. ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... wife of preceding; renter of seats in Saint-Francois. Last nurse of Sylvain Pons, and a tool to the interests of Fraisier ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe

... he slept all the afternoon. During that time, some one came who managed to unlock the cycle-shed and take the motor-cycle to go to Suresnes. As for the handkerchief and the revolver, they were in the tool-bag. There would be nothing surprising in the murderer's ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc

... calls upon the sun-god to ignite the altars. The pyre flames, the heat warms the clinging tunic, which wraps Hercules in its folds of torture. Writhing in agony, he flings himself upon the burning pyramid, followed by Dejanira, who, in despair, sees too late that she has been but a tool in ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory

... and nicked; it had been used for a lot of things wood chisels oughtn't to be used for. Digging, and prying, and most likely, it had been used as a weapon. It was a handy-sized, all-purpose tool for a Little Fuzzy. He laid it on the floor where he had gotten it ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper

... by the distribution of the spoils. At the magic word siruta all these new-comers rushed in a mass upon the white men. Marcoy managed to slip his fine ivory-handled machete within his trowser leg, but every other cutting tool disappeared as if by magic from the possession of the explorers. The shooting-utensils the savages, believing them haunted, would not touch. Then, half irritated at the exhaustion of the booty, the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various

... Garfield's description of a university included only two factors as essential—the teacher and the student. The external equipment—buildings, libraries, laboratories—what not—is merely a tool in their hands. Please do not misunderstand me. I am not inveighing against these things; they are necessary. What I am insisting upon is that not things but teachers make a university. And so my topic, "The University and the Teacher," launches us at once into ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd

... without weakness or pity, and though Dickens deals seldom with the greater tragedies of the world in his domestic dramas, necessity pursues his characters as grimly and certainly as in real life. The villain Quilp and his tool make us forget, in the amusement which they cause, their own baseness. But their creator is not deceived. He makes them bring their own ruin upon their heads. To be true, not only to the outward presentment and speech and thought of ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne

... endowed with excellent practical abilities, possessed a most retentive memory, and a thorough knowledge of the most intricate windings of the human heart. Nothing escaped his observation. It would have been a difficult matter to have made a tool of one, whose suspicions were always wide awake; who never acted from impulse, or without a motive, and who had a shrewd knack of rendering the passions of others ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie

... obtained "Grand Diplomas of Honor" for documents. The like honor was awarded to the city of Boston and the Smithsonian Institution, and to four private exhibitors for the more palpable contributions of tool-making machinery, steam-machinery, mowing-machines and dentistry. This list does not teach us much. The prizes are, unless awarded with the most intelligent and conscientious precision, valuable chiefly as advertisements to the recipients, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various

... off duty, I suppose you may stay and talk—if I fall asleep in the middle you must not be offended. You'll find plenty of chairs in the tool house." ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker

... of my rather meagre breakfast, I got out the tool chest, and, using the plank which I had retrieved, made a cleat for the reception of a rowlock. This I firmly fixed to the boat's transom, so that, when necessary, we could use one of the oars to steer with; or for sculling purposes. The job occupied me for the best ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood

... 11th, when it is hoped that the documents will have come back again. But even in this case, the Ambassador Extraordinary will need all the firmness of his character to overrule this cabal which brings uneasiness to the Emperor's family and uses the Archbishop as a tool. I have done everything that I could to impress upon the Minister how much the present state of affairs compromises the dignity of our court. He has shown me a list of questions presented by the Archbishop, ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand

... this account. Some of the old Greek philosophers, too, found much in nature that was divine. Christianity took a different view of the matter—it exalted the spirit, and emphasised the baseness of the material. The growth of the sciences made man again a mere tool of laws and methods, but it considered matter as superior to mind, mind being entirely dependent upon impressions received from matter. The question continually recurs—which is the high, which is the low? Shall nature triumph over spirit, or ...
— Rudolph Eucken • Abel J. Jones

... chest of drawers I came across a small lead saw bought for sixpence, with which you succeeded in quite cutting through the large Wisteria vine on Grandma Bartram's porch! I wished to punish you, but she said—'No, Susanna, rather preserve the tool as a memento of ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright

... tools, or rather bits of iron, seen amongst them, and which they had before our arrival, were a piece of iron hoop, about two inches long, fitted into a wooden handle;[2] and another edge-tool, which our people guessed to be made of the point of a broad-sword. Their having the actual possession of these, and their so generally knowing the use of this metal, inclined some on board to think that we had not been the first European visitors of these islands. But it seems to ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr

... the letter and its meaning," he continued. "I knew that the whole neighbourhood was under the observation of the French Secret Service, and the man who signed himself Richard Drew Foster saw in you an excellent tool ready to his hand. It is very certain also that the matter would probably have presented itself to you in a wholly different light. Accordingly, I placed the letter in my own pocket, and I ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... It was so at the time of the Turkish war of 1877 and of the Berlin Congress, and it remained so until with the advent of the present dynasty Servia offered a sure prospect of becoming and remaining a permanent tool in Russia's hands and ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various

... intestine of the sacrificial victim for purposes of divination and cooked its flesh for the gods. The word is now seldom used, except with reference to the sacrifice of their liberty and peace by a male and a female tool. ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce

... center of society,—the Home—is deprived of the help of scientific invention and suggestion. It is only slowly and by the utmost effort that some small foothold has been gained for the vacuum cleaner, the washing-machine, the power tool, and the chemical reagent. In our frantic effort to preserve the last vestiges of slavery and mediaevalism we not only set out faces against such improvements, but we seek to use education and the power of the state to train the servants who do ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois

... Ana, which perhaps other thoughts may have driven from his memory. It was as to the nature of that Power of which you speak. In that message I said that you were wise, but now I perceive that you lack wisdom like the rest of us, for if you had it, you would know that the tool which carves is not the guiding hand, and the lightning which smites is not the sending strength. So with this fair love of yours, and so with me and all that work marvels. We do not the things we seem to do, who are but the tool and the lightning. What I would know is who or what ...
— Moon of Israel • H. Rider Haggard

... young advocate, and the most brutal ferocity when he was an old judge, sat equally secure on the brazen forehead of George Jeffreys. The real and undoubted ability and scholarship of Jeffreys only made his wickedness the more awful, and his whole career the greater curse both to those whose tool he was, and to those whose blood he drank daily. Jeffreys drank brandy and sang lewd songs all night, and he drank blood and cursed and swore on the bench all day. Just imagine the state of our English courts when a judge could thus assail a poor wretch of a woman after passing a cruel ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte

... on the morning of the murder he called by accident at the Volpi's, and stopped there, till after the tinker, who was an entire stranger to him, had left the house. Serafino Volpi then offered to accompany him to his (Starna's) house, on the pretence of borrowing some tool or other. They walked quickly to avoid the rain, which was falling heavily, and shortly overtook Ugolini, who exchanged a few words with Volpi about the weather, and then turned off along a bye-road. Thereupon Volpi proposed that they should follow the old man and rob him, adding, "he ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey

... begun unbuttonin' those big wooden spools, specially after a couple of our doughboy squad, who'd worked pneumatic riveters back home, took hold of the drills. Others fished some hand sledges and crowbars out of a tool shed and helped the work along, while Mike encourages his gang with a fluent ...
— Torchy and Vee • Sewell Ford

... is just gone downstairs to look for a tool he has forgotten. I have at last succeeded in drawing from him the secret of his and Genevieve's sorrow. Their son Robert is the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester

... Cobweb had been out at sea, but now, apparently detecting the maneuvers of the Golden Butterfly, she headed about, and came racing back. Peggy deftly attached weights—spare bolts from the tool locker—to each of the cards, and then, snatching up a megaphone, she hailed the uniformed figures on the bridge of the ...
— The Girl Aviators' Sky Cruise • Margaret Burnham

... Your niece knew nothing of such men. When he breathed his vows to her, as he had done to a hundred before her, she flattered herself that she alone had touched his heart. The devil knows best what he said, but at least she became his tool and was in the habit of ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

... been so tired that he would not go to the spring up on the side of "Old Round Top" for a pail of water, rather than drink from this well. Back of the house, but within the enclosure formed by the picket fence, was the wood and tool shed—while just beyond stood the old- fashioned bank barn and other farm buildings. There was a short steep hill just beyond the barn, down which the lane wound to a mill pond below. An old sawmill with an undershot water-wheel stood at the extreme ...
— Hidden Treasure • John Thomas Simpson

... fill. 'Thirty days' mourning,' and says my text, with almost a bitter touch,' so the days of mourning for Moses were ended.' A month of it, that was all; and then everybody turned to the new man that was appointed for the new work. God has many tools in His tool-chest, and He needs them all before the work is done. Joshua could no more have wielded Moses' rod than Moses could have wielded Joshua's sword. The one did his work, and was laid aside. New circumstances required a new type of character—the smaller man ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... hither. Bring that tool. Its name I know not; but its use Written on its shape in full Tells me it is no abuse If I strike a hole withal Through this thick opposed wall. The rainbow-pavement! Never heed it— What is that, where light is needed? Where? ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald

... light quit blinking without the expected electrical display. Sinuous as beheaded snakes, the wires and cables supporting the traffic signal fell into the street. The unusual man pocketed his cutting tool—a long thin tube—and lowered the stop light to the truck. He looked at Whedbee. The corner street lamp reacted upon his eyes like a flashlight thrown on a tomcat in an alley. ...
— Stopover Planet • Robert E. Gilbert

... the idea, and in this way Petit-Claud strengthened his position with regard to David on the one side and the Cointets on the other. Casting about him for a tool for his party, he naturally thought that a rogue of Cerizet's calibre was the very ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac

... once "heared" Sedalia Lane telling some of her experiences, and she said she "surreptitiously stole along." One day, when I thought the coast was clear, I was surreptitiously examining the contents of the tool-chest with a view toward securing to myself such hammers, saws, and what else I might need in doing some carpentry work I had planned. The tool-chest is kept in the granary; both it and the granary are usually kept ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart

... dogs followed the wounded hound, and I went with them. The Marquesans had war-clubs and long knives like undersized machetes. Every Islander carries such a knife for cutting underbrush or cocoanut-stems, and usually it is his only tool for building native houses, so that he becomes very expert with it, as the Filipino with his bolo or the Cuban with ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien

... while Brown did the work. In this they were grossly mistaken, for Brown was having the good time, while I was bored and uncomfortable. Why, Brown actually whistled as he repaired that puncture. He had freedom because he knew which tool to use, where to find it, and how to use it. But there I sat in ignorance and thraldom—not knowing the truth about the tools ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson

... from officers who are at this very hour ready to batter the Treasury with what breaks through stone walls for an increase of their appointments. From the marrowless bones of these skeleton establishments, by the use of every sort of cutting and of every sort of fretting tool, he flatters himself that he may chip and rasp an empirical alimentary powder, to diet into some similitude of health and substance the languishing chimeras ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... this question for the purpose of sounding the morality of the man, or rather to try the strength of a tool, which he ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid

... at Patten Brig, but Jim was sure they'd go down-stream!" she cried breathlessly. "They're coming up! I think they're at the pool below the village! Get two poles—you'll find some in the tool-shed—and come along ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss

... in their quaint and beauteous forms—the heart-shaped shepherd's purse, the mask-like skull-cap, and the crowned urn of the henbane. The starred cap of the poppy was actually being shaped under the tool, copied from a green capsule, surmounted with purple velvety rays, which, together with its rough and wavy leaf, was held in the hand of a young maiden who knelt by the table, watching the work with ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge

... The tool being procured, they hammered upon the upper end of the rod, and drilled as miners do in rock. After some time of ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman

... domestic affairs which arose between 1812 and 1827. Castlereagh may have been the most influential minister in the earlier years of his administration, and Canning in the later, but he was never the mere tool of either; on the contrary, it Is certain that he was treated with respect and deference by all his numerous colleagues. In general capacity and debating power he was inferior to few of them; in temper, judgment, and experience he ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick

... countenance. The latter, while inheriting his mother's beauty and resembling her in a marked degree, yet betrayed in his face a weakness which indicated that, lacking ability to plan and execute for himself, he would become a ready tool to aid in carrying ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour

... whiffletree to the blunt lip of the old hearthstone which marked the stage-house chimney. He had tried a step-dance on it and found it hollow. More fresh digging, and marks upon the stone where some prying tool had taken hold and slipped, showed he was not the ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote

... wooden, or ivory diagrams, for the geometrical demonstrations. I should think wood as good as ivory; and that in this case, it might add to the improvement of the young gentlemen, that they should make the figures themselves. Being furnished by a workman with a piece of veneer, no other tool than a penknife and a wooden rule, would be necessary. Perhaps pasteboards, or common cards, might be still more convenient. The difficulty is, how to reconcile figures which must have a very sensible breadth to our ideas of a mathematical ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson

... pride was broken down. The Almighty had refused to be made a tool of. He took up his hat and rolled his arm over it the wrong way of the nap. Half-way to the door he paused. "Well, I'll be laving you; good-day, sir," he said, nodding his head slowly. "The Lord's been knowing what you were all the ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine

... contemplated resistance, for these were troopers of the Royal Horse, the body which was now Peter's most effective personal tool; but even as his hand slipped to the butt of one of the revolvers at his hip, the young man saw the foolish futility of such a course, and with a shrug and a smile he drew rein and turned to face ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... preliminaries had to be settled. Gordon had a suspicion that his appointment was a sham, and that he would not have the power he needed to suppress the slave trade. He was determined that coute qui coute he would not be made a tool of to blind the European public, so at the very outset he showed his colours, and let the Khedive clearly understand that he was not a mere hireling anxious to secure a well-paid billet. As for his pay, though his predecessor had received L10,000 per annum, he ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill

... I needed many things to make me comfortable. First I wanted a chair and a table, for without them I must live like a savage. So I set to work. I had never handled a tool in my life, but I had a saw, an axe, and several hatchets, and I soon learned to use them all. If I wanted a board, I had to chop down a tree. From the trunk of the tree I cut a log of the length ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... supply planning must consider it, for to build against any conceivable shortage would be prohibitively expensive. Pricing of water so as to cut down on waste without curtailing ample legitimate use may well be a longrun tool, as has been suggested. But in terms of general municipal and industrial water, any great degree of calculated shortage hardly seems appropriate for a humid-zone city which has a fine river at its doorstep and happens ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior

... in the Council at Dublin regarded James merely as a tool to be employed for achieving the deliverance of Ireland, another party regarded Ireland merely as a tool to be employed for effecting the restoration of James. To the English and Scotch lords and gentlemen who had accompanied him from Brest, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... purification of literature. The influence of women has been a part of the cause of this, unquestionably; but I would not ascribe such a result to any one cause. God is a great workman, and has a chest full of tools, and never uses one tool, but always many; and in the purification of literature, the elevation of thought, the advancement of the public sentiment of the world in humanity, God has employed more than that which has been wrought in their departments. And that which the family has long ago achieved—that, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... noble death was love for me. E'en in the moment when his brief esteem Exalted you, he was my own. And when With fascinating tongue he sported with Your haughty, giant mind, 'twas your conceit To bridle him; but you became yourself The pliant tool of his exalted plans. That I became a prisoner, my arrest, Was his deep friendship's meditated work. That letter to Prince William was designed To save my life. It was the first deceit He ever practised. To insure my safety He rushed on death himself, and nobly ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... by my dear mother," said the Touranian, "with which castles and cities are built and demolished, a hammer to coin money, a remedy for every ill, a traveller's staff always ready to be tried, and worth most when in a state of readiness, a master tool, which executes wondrous works in all sorts of forges, without ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac

... this, in a way, will explain his desire to connect himself with a personality so naive and strange as Peter Laughlin. He had annexed him as a surgeon selects a special knife or instrument for an operation, and, shrewd as old Laughlin was, he was destined to be no more than a tool in Cowperwood's strong hands, a mere hustling messenger, content to take orders from this swiftest of moving brains. For the present Cowperwood was satisfied to do business under the firm name of Peter ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser



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