"Wheel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... have his hand or ear cut off, or his tongue torn out; he might be burned with red-hot irons or have molten lead poured into his flesh. Hanging was an easy death compared to the lingering torture of having one's bones broken on a wheel. ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... the town. If it is a starry night, the torrent glides swiftly away with an inverted firmament in its bosom, to which the lamps along its shores and in the houses on either side contribute a planetary splendor of their own. By nine o'clock everything is hushed; not a wheel is heard at that dead hour; the few feet shuffling stealthily through the Alte Wiese whisper a caution of silence to those issuing with a less guarded tread from the opera; the little bowers that overhang the stream are as dark and mute as the restaurants across the way which ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... GRAVITATION and ELECTROMETER). The term also connotes the idea of equality or equalization; e.g. in the following expressions: "balance," in bookkeeping, the amount which equalizes the debit and credit accounts; "balance wheel," [v.03 p.0235] in horology, a device for equalizing the relaxing of a watch or clock spring (see CLOCK); the "balancing of engines," the art of minimizing the total vibrations of engines when running, and consisting generally ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... it has been well observed, "the heel is always raised before the foot is lifted from the ground, as if the foot were part of a wheel rolling forward, and the weight of the body, supported by the muscles of the calf of the leg, rests, for a time, on the fore part of the foot and toes. There is then a bending of the foot in ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... thrust out in turn drives out its neighbour; and in this way everything of necessity at last comes round to that place from whence the breath came forth, and enters in there, and following the breath, fills up the vacant space; and this goes on like the rotation of a wheel, because there can be no such thing as a vacuum. Wherefore also the breast and the lungs, when they emit the breath, are replenished by the air which surrounds the body and which enters in through the pores of the flesh and is driven round in a circle; and again, the ...
— Timaeus • Plato
... descendant of the French Basset-hound, and others that he is related to the old Turnspits—the dogs so excellent in kitchen service, of whom Dr. Caius wrote that "when any meat is to be roasted they go into a wheel, where they, turning about with the weight of their bodies, so diligently look to their business that no drudge nor scullion can do the feat more cunningly, whom the popular sort hereupon term Turnspits." Certainly the dog commonly used ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... answered the Swami. "The rush of the wheel of life, it exhausts. But I comprehend. I also am a man. The great world of business has its necessities and its value. My outer nature shares in it. Ah, you know not. You think of me only on one side of being. But, like you, I have my ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... proceed to delineate an escape wheel for a detached lever. We place a piece of good drawing-paper on our drawing-board and provide ourselves with a very hard (HHH) drawing-pencil and a bottle of liquid India ink. After placing our paper on the board, we draw, with the aid of our T-square, a line ...
— Watch and Clock Escapements • Anonymous
... Worth Having, pp. 84-89.] It is easy enough to point out, however, that nature man to follow. "In sober truth, nearly all the things which men are hanged or imprisoned for doing to one another, are nature's everyday performances. Nature impales men, breaks them as if on the wheel, casts them to be devoured by wild beasts, crushes them with stones like the first Christian martyr, starves them with hunger, freezes them with cold, poisons them by the quick or slow venom of her exhalations." [Footnote: ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... in the sense of 'defeat,' and is cognate with route, rote, and rut. All come from Lat. ruptus, broken: a 'rout' is the breaking up of a crowd, or a crowd broken up; a 'route' is a way broken through a forest; 'rote' is a beaten track; and a 'rut' is a track left by a wheel. See Lyc. 61, "by the rout that made ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... great a simpleton had arrived. Courtiers, footmen, lackeys, turnspits even, were forever sending him off on ridiculous errands. Now he would be sent to find a white craw's feather or a spray of yellow bluebells; now he was ordered to look for a square wheel or a glass of dry water. Everybody laughed at him and made fun of him—that is, everybody except little Tilda, the kitchen-maid. When poor Bobo used to return from some wild-goose chase, tired out, mud-stained, and often enough ...
— The Firelight Fairy Book • Henry Beston
... repose more confidence in a sword he holds in his hand than in a bullet he discharges out of a pistol, wherein there must be a concurrence of several circumstances to make it perform its office, the powder, the stone, and the wheel: if any of which fail it endangers your fortune. A man himself strikes much surer than the ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... election, when the first symptoms of resistance to national authority were visible in the South. If the new Cabinet had been then in power, the history of the civil revolt might have been different. But the force that will arrest the first slow revolution of a wheel cannot stand before it when, by unchecked velocity, it has acquired a destructive momentum. The measures which might have secured repression in November would only have produced ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... brought To those who indulge it in innocent thought So fatal an evil awaking! But no. For in lives such as ours are, the Dream-tree would grow On the borders of Hades: beyond it, what lies? The wheel of Ixion, alas! and the cries Of the lost and tormented. Departed, for us, Are the days when with innocence we could discuss Dreams like these. Fled, indeed, are the dreams of my life! Oh trust me, the best friend you have is your wife. And I—in that pure child's pure virtue, I ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... on the wheel like a bird on a twig; she had a bird's power of alighting and sustaining herself on the most difficult and most airy elevation; but Cecil turned his eyes on the only soldier in the cart besides himself, one of the ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... thou?" exclaimed Captain Mead, examining the stranger's countenance. "Verily, I thought thou wast no longer in the land of the living; but thou art welcome, heartily welcome. Come with me to my house in Cornhill, at the sign of the 'Spinning Wheel,' and thou shalt tell me where thou hast been wandering all this time; while, may be, we will have a talk ...
— A True Hero - A Story of the Days of William Penn • W.H.G. Kingston
... Walter ran toward the horse, seized him by the bridle before he had time to wheel around, and in another second was ...
— Neal, the Miller - A Son of Liberty • James Otis
... coming to that," said Ling Chu. "There is a very faint trace of a man who came early, because the wet footsteps are over his; also he left, but there is no sign of him on the gravel, only the mark of a wheel-track." ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... the people and fling away victory; he had got his election because the defections from our ranks in the doubtful states far outbalanced Goodrich's extensive purchases there with the huge campaign-fund of the interests. The wheel-horse, Partizanship, had broken down, and the leader, Plutocracy, could not draw the ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... right arm, his five fingers, to live—well, this very man, who should be the first to economize his vital principle, outruns his strength, yokes his wife to some machine, wears out his child, and ties him to the wheel. The manufacturer—or I know not what secondary thread which sets in motion all these folk who with their foul hands mould and gild porcelain, sew coats and dresses, beat out iron, turn wood and steel, weave hemp, festoon crystal, imitate ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... to sea. Two tall Chinese boys scurried about with wicker chairs, with trays of bottles, ice, and cheroots, while he barked his orders, like a fox-terrier commanding a pair of solemn dock-rats. The white men soon lounged beside the wheel-house. ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... she found her sister in their chamber, sitting at the spinning wheel. She had not left her suffering mother until her eyes closed in slumber, and was now waiting for Eva, to hear whether the entertainment had proved less disagreeable than she feared, and—as she had sent her maid to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... [46]—before I write? 480 If this precaution softened not my bile, I know no scribbler with a madder style; But since (perhaps my feelings are too nice) I cannot purchase Fame at such a price, I'll labour gratis as a grinders' wheel, [lxviii] And, blunt myself, give edge to other's steel, Nor write at all, unless to teach the art To those rehearsing for the Poet's part; From Horace show the pleasing paths of song, [lxix], And from my own ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... he was doing something to his wheel, getting it in order for a long ride which he had planned for the next day. Edna stood watching him, ready to hand a tool or run for a piece of rag to be used in cleaning, or to fill the oil can from the bottle on the ...
— A Dear Little Girl at School • Amy E. Blanchard
... extorted from the Romans an annual payment of thirty thousand pieces of gold; and the smallness of the sum revealed the disgrace of a tribute in its naked deformity. In a previous debate, the chariot of Sesostris, and the wheel of fortune, were applied by one of the ministers of Justinian, who observed that the reduction of Antioch, and some Syrian cities, had elevated beyond measure the vain and ambitious spirit of the Barbarian. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... is out of date to be carried in a sedan chair when one can fly around on a bicycle, and though in our conservative South, we have still some preachers with Florida moss on their chins, who storm at the woman on her wheel as riding straight to hell, we believe, with Julian Ralph, that the women bicyclists "out-pace their staider sisters in ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... sons of a mere private gentleman; nothing visibly ahead of them, at one time, but an obscure and extremely limited destiny of that kind;—though now again, on French favor, and the turn of Fortune's inconstant wheel, they are mounting very high. Bavaria came all back to the old Elector of Bavaria; even Marlborough's "Principality of MINDELHEIM" came. [At the Peace of Baden (corollary to UTRECHT), 1714. Elector had ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... waterfall, Till the expanse should fairly give The bow'ring hazel room to live; And as each swelling junction came, To form a riv'let worth a name, We'd dart beneath, or brush away Long-beaded webs, that else might stay Our silent course; in haste retreat, Where whirlpools near the bull-rush meet; Wheel round the ox of monstrous size; And count below his shadowy flies; And sport amidst the throng; and when We met the barks of giant men, Avoid their oars, still undescried, And mock their overbearing pride; Then vanish by some magic spell, And shout, ...
— The Banks of Wye • Robert Bloomfield
... George Gordon riots are against Protestantism, or the Jacobin tribunals against Republican justice. But Mr. Pattison cannot conclude his account without an application. Here you have an example of what the Catholic revival does. It first breaks Calas on the wheel; and then, because Voltaire took up his cause, it makes modern Frenchmen, if they are Catholics, believe ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... the wheel of heaven When it rolls not rightly by; I am not one of the snivellers Who ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... Clonbrony had just had some uncommonly good from Ireland, which Pratt knew Lady St. James would like to have at her supper, because a certain personage, whom she would not name, was particularly fond of it.—Wheel within wheel in the fine world, as well as in the political world!—Bribes for all occasions, and for all ranks! The timely present was sent, accepted with many thanks, and understood as it was meant. Per favour of this propitiatory offering, and of a promise ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... standing on the alighting board, with their heads turned towards the entrance, the extremity of their bodies slightly elevated, and their wings in such rapid motion that they are almost as indistinct as the spokes of a wheel, in swift rotation on its axis. A brisk current of air may be felt proceeding from the hive, and if a small piece of down be suspended by a thread, it will be blown out from one part of the entrance, and drawn in at another. What are these bees expecting to accomplish, that they ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... nameless Fair! For it's not my intention to marry, says she, and, ma'am, I'm a man of honour or I'd catch you tight, my nut-brown maid, and clap you into a cage, fal-lal, like a squirrel; to trot the wheel of mat-trimony. Shame to the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... picture a large mill-pond with a race running out of one side of it past the old-fashioned mill, which has a big wooden water wheel on the outside ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... By that time the wind was blowing squally out of the northeast. The schooner was put under try sails, "a three-reefed mitten with the thumb brailed up," as he heard the boatkeeper call it. This latter was at the wheel for a moment, but in a little while he called up a young man dressed in a suit of oilskins and a pea jacket and gave him the charge. For a long time Vandover watched the boy turning the spokes back and forth, his eyes alternating between the ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... Mordaunt scrutinized it carefully, and strode swiftly over to an opposite corner of the stage where an ancient letterpress stood. Running an inked roller over the surface of the etching, he placed it on the bed of the press, revolved the wheel rapidly in one direction, reversed, and drew forth ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... hand irrespective of it, just as Cato and his friends now proposed to do; the machinery of the constitution was in fact utterly effete, and the senate was now—as the comitia had been for centuries—nothing but a worn-out wheel slipping ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... convinced, are the greatest enthusiasts. Grandmother was glad to give up the fatiguing spinning wheel. So the modern woman is glad to stop cooking with expensive butter, animal ...
— The Story of Crisco • Marion Harris Neil
... happy days for Micheline, who was delighted at having Serge near her, attentive to her every want, and controlling his thoroughbred English horse to her gentle pace. Every now and then his mount would wheel about and rear in revolt, she following him with fond looks, proud of the elegant cavalier who could subdue without apparent effort, by the mere pressure of his ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... and showy instrumental march of the Israelites, followed by two very striking choruses,—the first ("Hold not Thy Peace and be not still, O God") of which appeals for divine help against the enemy, and the second, an allegro ("O God, make them like a Wheel"), leads into a fugue ("So persecute them"), which is very energetic in character, and closes with the martial hymn, "God and King of Jacob's Nation," sung to the melody ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... be less irksome than idleness—at all events it would be more profitable. If life promised no enjoyment within my vocation, at least it offered no allurements out of it; and henceforth I would put my shoulder to the wheel and toil away, like any poor drudge of a cart-horse that was fairly broken in to its labour, and plod through life, not wholly useless if not agreeable, and uncomplaining if ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... are dropped, as near the ocean as may be, and with as little order as birds' nests in the grass, among the sweet-fern, laurel, bay, wild raspberries, and dog-roses, which it is the ideal to leave as untouched as possible. Wheel-worn lanes that twist about among the hollows find the cottages from the highway, but foot-paths approach one cottage from another, and people walk rather than drive to each other's doors. From the deep-bosomed, well-sheltered little harbor the tides swim ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... tribes wander, along the marge of Rhine or Elbe, and over frozen fens, in one perpetual straight line, until the sea is reached and the road ends because it can go no further. All the while, the iron wheel-rims of our chariot have jarred upon imperishable paved work; there has been no stop nor stay; the visions of things beautiful and strange and tedious have flown past; at the climax we look forth across ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... had cost us dear. A wet scirocco had replaced the bright norther and saddened all the view. Passing the tide-rip Charybdis, a meeting of currents, which called only for another hand at the wheel; and the castled crag of naughty Scylla, whose town has grown prodigiously, we bade adieu to the 'tower of Pelorus.' Then we shaped our course for the Islands of AEolus, or the Winds, and the Lipari archipelago, all volcanic cones whose outlines were misty as Ossian's spectres. And we ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... by the workmen's gross jests and insults, felt tears rise to his eyes at the last words spoken by Vian. However, he did not open his lips. He took up his hammer, which he had laid down near him, and began with all his might to strike the nave of a wheel which he was binding ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... drunk, sir, an' runnin' amuck with the ship. He's at the wheel an' he won't leave it. We've nearly scraped one reef already. You know this ain't any open sea, sir. There's ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... coming, the housekeeping was put on a grand scale. There was a retinue of English servants, and continual company. I remember it well, for just then my poor mother died. She had been a widow, living in a low cottage hard by the park-wall, with me and a gray cat for company, and her spinning-wheel for our support. I was but a child when she died; and having neither uncle nor aunt in the parish, they took me, I think, by her ladyship's order, into the castle, to run small errands, and help in the garden; from which post, in process of time, I rose to that of ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various
... and do the best he could. A large crowd flocked in from all sides to witness the experiment. Lincoln guided the bark well up to the New Salem dam. Here a gap had been cut to let the vessel slip through. But at a place called Bogue's Mill, the water was rapidly lowering, and they had to wheel about and get back, or be shoaled and be held there until the spring freshets. The return trip was slow, as, though the stream was in his favor, the high prairie wind delayed the boat. The falling water ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... which she returned as coolly. She found a quiet corner where she could sit and watch the waves slowly rising and falling, the white foam-crests slowly gathering, the light spray dashing against the side of the boat, the cataract of white roaring water leaping from the swift paddle-wheel and melting into a long track of foam. By-and-by they came to Guernsey, which looked grim and military, and not particularly inviting, even in the morning sunlight. That picturesque island hides her beauties from those who only behold her from the sea. Here there was an exodus of passengers, ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... and had levied a ruinous tax upon the shawl to make itself a nest. Never was a fabric more completely reduced into its original elements than were large sections of that shawl. It was a masterly piece of analysis. The work of the wheel and the loom was exactly reversed, and what was once shawl was now the ...
— Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers • John Burroughs
... subjects, and the danger of his kingdom, were overbalanced in the mind of Hormouz by the disgrace of his personal enemy; and no sooner had Bahram collected and reviewed his forces, than he received from a royal messenger the insulting gift of a distaff, a spinning-wheel, and a complete suit of female apparel. Obedient to the will of his sovereign he showed himself to the soldiers in this unworthy disguise they resented his ignominy and their own; a shout of rebellion ran through the ranks; and the general accepted their oath of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... A rakish little stern-wheel steamer lay in the stream, bound for Pittsburg, and sorely was Miselle tempted to take passage down the Alleghany in her; but lingering memories of home and the long-suffering Caleb at last prevailed, and, with a sigh, she turned her back upon the beautiful river, and retraced her steps through ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... constantly enter the camp by ways over which the sentries have no control (the Balloon Brigade being not yet even in the clouds); but Slyboots showed no disposition to join them. They flaunt and forage in the Lines, they inspect the ashpits and cookhouses, they wheel and manoeuvre on the parades, but Slyboots sat serene upon his poker. He had a cook-house all to himself.... He died. We must all die; but we need not all die of repletion, which, I fear, was his case. He buried his last meal between two bricks in the kitchen floor, and covered ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... that old home. We were so happy there. I know I am not happier now when we own all the treasures of the caves, than when we were building the water wheel, and the little shop, and tending the yaks," answered George, as he gazed across the sea, and thought of the glorious times and of ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Treasures of the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... neck, and throw himself into the Danube. A thousand disquieting thoughts passed through Timar's head, without beginning or end. He looked on till night-fall, while one sack after the other was propped against the cabin wall. The sacks all had the same mark—a five-spoked wheel printed in black on the sacking. In truth, that poor fugitive pasha had been wiser, if, instead of buying so much grain, he had just put his money in his knapsack. And to think of pursuing him so obstinately ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... wheel obeyed the order with steadiness, but in vain did he keep his eyes on the margin of his head sail, to watch the manner in which the ship would obey its power. Twice more, in as many moments, the giddy masts fell towards the horizon, waving ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... keep my eyes upon him. I suppose, ma petite, if I had the right to keep you from the fans of water-mills, that I also hold the right of endeavouring to preserve you from a man whose arms would be worse than the rending wheel?" She said nothing, but there was gratitude enough in her eye to reward for the most daring risk that man ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins
... the surface facing down the stream; in a moment the visible world seemed to wheel slowly round, himself the pivotal point, and he saw the bridge, the fort, the soldiers upon the bridge, the captain, the sergeant, the two privates, his executioners. They were in silhouette against the blue sky. They shouted and gesticulated, pointing at him. The captain had drawn his pistol, ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... think over it, and think hard if need be. But when they meet that problem a second or a third time, they solve it automatically. A man learning to drive a car has presented to him a new problem about which he must think keenly. The steering wheel, the foot-brake, the accelerator, the brake and speed levers, the possibility of touching the wrong pedal,—all demand his undivided attention and keep him thinking every moment of the time. But having learned, having solved his problem, he can run his car without conscious thought, ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... wretch they would not aid." Thus groan the old, till by disease oppress'd, They taste a final woe, and then they rest. Theirs is yon House that holds the parish poor, Whose walls of mud scarce bear the broken door; There, where the putrid vapours, flagging, play, And the dull wheel hums doleful through the day;- There children dwell who know no parents' care; Parents, who know no children's love, dwell there! Heart-broken matrons on their joyless bed, Forsaken wives, and mothers never wed; Dejected widows with ...
— The Village and The Newspaper • George Crabbe
... rains, and exhibiting holes two feet deep, liable to break the horses' legs and the wheels of the vehicles. Here is a road, close to Havana, with stones weighing hundreds of pounds on the surface, in the very wheel-tracks. Handsome hedges of the wild pine, the aloe, and the Spanish bayonet line the road, where an occasional royal palm, the emblem of majesty, stands alone, adding grandeur to all the surroundings. If you drive out to Cerro, put ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... row in the front has stepped to the water to drink. These also are bull buffaloes. When they finish drinking, they also wheel, march to the back of the herd, and there stand behind the first row. In this way four or five rows of bulls drink, one after the other, and go to the back ...
— The Wonders of the Jungle - Book One • Prince Sarath Ghosh
... had arisen; the steam steering-gear had come to grief, and the old, long-neglected wheel had to be brought into use. It had not been used for years, and though constantly cleaned and kept in order, the salt water had been washing over it now for hours, and it was very hard to turn. The question ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... They knew that the time of the Winter solstice is in some strange fashion the high moment of the year, as the beginning of new activity in nature and in the gods. They solemnized the return of the fiery sun wheel; they traced in those solstice days the operations on earth of Odin and Berchta. They knew in themselves a thing they could not name. And when the supreme experience took place in Christ, they made the one experience typify the other, and became conscious of the divine nature of this nativity. ...
— Christmas - A Story • Zona Gale
... carrying off his bride on a pleasure tour (Mrs. Winter that was, and who had been at school with May's grandmother); there was Sir John and my Lady with a dozen children, and corresponding nursemaids; and the great grandee Bareacres family that sat by themselves near the wheel, stared at everybody, and spoke to no one. Their carriages, emblazoned with coronets and heaped with shining imperials, were on the foredeck, locked in with a dozen more such vehicles: it was difficult to pass in and out amongst them; and the poor inmates of the fore-cabin ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... city it was a two hours' journey by horse and phaeton. My grandfather drove. I sat next, my feet swinging clear of the lunchbox. My brother had the outside, a place denied to me for fear that I might fall across the wheel. When we were all set, my mother made a last dab at my nose—an unheeded smudge having escaped my vigilance. Then my grandfather said, "Get up,"—twice, for the lazy horse chose to regard the first summons as a jest. ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... the surly grace; But, lost in thoughtless ease and empty show, Behold the warriour dwindled to a beau; Sense, freedom, piety, refin'd away, Of France the mimick, and of Spain the prey. All that at home no more can beg or steal, Or like a gibbet better than a wheel; Hiss'd from the stage, or hooted from the court, Their air, their dress, their politicks, import; [p]Obsequious, artful, voluble and gay, On Britain's fond credulity they prey. No gainful trade their industry can 'scape, [q]They sing, they dance, clean shoes, or cure a clap: ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... afterwards that stock was worth several thousand dollars. I made diligent inquiry for my young friend, but could get no news of him from that day to this. I have been fortunate in everything I have touched since I came to California. Benton grew well and strong; I recovered my health; Fortune's wheel for me seemed to remain in one happy position; and now there seems nothing for me to do but to move slowly and easily down the sunset slope of life to ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... fast, with the going none too smooth, when, all at once, while making a sharp turn, the wheels skidded, and they were almost ditched. Laura gave a little scream, and, instinctively, grasped her companion's arm. He laughed to reassure her, and, giving the wheel a vigorous twist, the car was again under control and once more on ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... Mills benignantly dismissed me, saying, 'Go back to Dora!' and I went; and Dora leaned out of the carriage to talk to me, and we talked all the rest of the way; and I rode my gallant grey so close to the wheel that I grazed his near fore leg against it, and 'took the bark off', as his owner told me, 'to the tune of three pun' sivin'—which I paid, and thought extremely cheap for so much joy. What time Miss Mills sat looking at the moon, murmuring verses—and recalling, I suppose, the ancient days ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... mesured it by the astrolabre. Now schulle ze knowe, that azen the Transmontayne, is the tother sterre, that is clept Antartyke; as I have seyd before. And tho 2 sterres ne meeven nevere. And be hem turnethe alle the firmament, righte as dothe a wheel, that turnethe be his axille tree; so that tho sterres beren the firmament in 2 egalle parties; so that it hathe als mochel aboven, as it hathe benethen. Aftre this, I have gon toward the parties meridionales, that is toward the southe: and I ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation. v. 8 - Asia, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... is with many men; and, consequently, when temptation was offered to him, he had fallen. But he deeply grieved over his own stumbling, and from time to time, as his periods of penitence came upon him, he resolved that he would once more put his shoulder to the wheel as became one who fights upon earth that battle for which he had put on the armour. Over and over again did he think of those words of Mr. Crawley, and now as he walked up and down the path, crumpling ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... Eros, Would'st thou be window'd in great Rome, and see Thy Master thus with pleacht Armes, bending downe His corrigible necke, his face subdu'de To penetratiue shame; whil'st the wheel'd seate Of Fortunate Caesar drawne before him, branded His ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... more ear for music than a deal board that has knot-holes in it. I had ears indeed. But the clatter of the mill-wheel and the lapper of water on the stones of the shore were ever better music to me than singing or playing upon instruments. Nevertheless, at this time, for some reason or other, I was in a ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... enables them to bear. The lever of Archimedes would push the planet aside, provided only it were supplied with its indispensable complement, a fulcrum, or fixity: without this it will not push a pin. The block of the pulley must have its permanent attachment; the wheel of the locomotive engine requires beneath it the fixed rail; the foot of the pedestrian, solid earth; the wing of the bird rests upon the relatively stable air to support his body, and upon his body to gain power over ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... and not in vain. For, when it comes to be a question of each man doing his own share or the rest doing more, prettiness of sentiment will be forgotten. To dock the skulker's food is not enough; many will rather eat haws and starve on petty pilferings than put their shoulder to the wheel for one hour daily. For such as these, then, the whip will be in the overseer's hand; and his own sense of justice and the superintendence of a chaotic popular assembly will be the only checks on its employment. Now, you may be an industrious ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... found ourselves in a vast hall, filled to repletion with machinery in every condition of motion, from the slowest and scarcely perceptible movements of the hour hand of a watch up to the incalculable rapidity of a fly-wheel. All is flux, change, consumption of energy, wear and tear of the machinery itself. We know it must run down sometime, we know one day it must all be renewed. But amid all this instability we are well aware that there is a secret source ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... a short, wide woman of fifty or thereabout, was singing at a spinning-wheel. She had a kind, yellow face with high cheek-bones, and dark eyes which seemed darker by reason of the snowy hair showing under a mob cap. Her chin was square and pointed upward like old Mother Hubbard's, and she could talk of batter-cakes ...
— Katrine • Elinor Macartney Lane
... by his Government in search of improved methods of poppy cultivation—the Yunnan opium, with the exception of the Shansi opium, being probably the finest in China. Finally, in May, 1893, Lenz, the American bicyclist, to the profound amazement of the populace, rode on his "living wheel" to the Yesu-tang. This was the most remarkable journey of all. Lenz practically walked across China, surmounting hardships and dangers that few men would venture to face. I often heard of him. He stayed at the mission stations. ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... appeal, a judgment, on March 4th, 1673, declared that Jean Amelin Lachaussee was convicted of having poisoned the lieutenant and the councillor; for which he was to be broken alive on the wheel, having been first subjected to the question both ordinary and extraordinary, with a view to the discovery of his accomplices. At the same time Madame de Brinvilliers was condemned in default of appearance to have her ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... air catapult got to do with the Snowbird?" queried Jack. "You propose launching your flying machine in the usual way," said the professor. "I see you have wheel trucks all ready to slip under her. We will not use those wheels, boys. I have a better plan. We will launch the Snowbird into the air from ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... call of the tall white pine, and heard the call of the running brook; I'm tired of the tasks which each day are mine; I'm weary of reading a printed book. I want to get out of the din and strife, the clang and clamor of turning wheel, And walk for a day where life is life, and the joys are true ...
— When Day is Done • Edgar A. Guest
... few minutes The Frontiersman was cutting through the water out into the open. Sconda was at the wheel, with Glen by his side, while Taku, an Indian with special mechanical ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... false performance, there is good reason why we should be affected by the exposure. We have no deeper interest than our integrity, and that we should be made aware by joke and by stroke of any lie we entertain. Besides, a perception of the comic seems to be a balance-wheel in our metaphysical structure. It appears to be an essential element in a fine character.—A rogue alive to the ludicrous is still convertible. If that sense is lost, his fellow-men can ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... not buy a door-lock at a hardware store,—you get a fabbro to make it, and he comes with a leathern satchel full of tools to fit and finish it on the door. The wheelbarrow of this civilization is peculiarly wonderful in construction, with a prodigious wooden wheel, and a ponderous, incapable body. The canals are dredged with scoops mounted on long poles, and manned each by three or four Chiozzotti. There never was a pile-driving machine known in Venice; nor a steam-tug in all the channels of the lagoons, through which the largest ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... Creek was a fine mansion, finer than Drake Hill, and the hall made me think of England. Great oak chests stood against the walls, hung with rusting swords and armour and empty powder-horns. A carven seat was beside the cold hearth, and in a corner was a tall spinning-wheel, and the carven stair led in a spiral ascent of ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... which they inhabited, five senseless figures and two shouting, swearing, singing madmen represented the crew of the Black Swan. Coils of rope were brought forward by the steward, and with the help of two French seamen (the third was at the wheel) we secured the drunkards and tied them up, so that it was impossible for them to speak or move. They were placed under the fore-hatch, as their officers had been under the after one, and Kerouan was directed twice a day to give them food and drink. So at last we found that the Black Swan ...
— The Adventures of Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... however, had been won only by a direct appeal to the people, and all its advantages accrued to the people, and not to George III. His ingenious system of weak and divided ministries, with himself for balance-wheel, was destroyed. For the next seventeen years the real ruler of England was not George III., but William Pitt, who, with his great popular following, wielded such a power as no English sovereign had possessed since the days of Elizabeth. The political atmosphere was cleared of intrigue; ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... biddeth the heart-wise Hogni, and men to the windows climb, And uplift the war-grey corpses, dead drift of the stormy time, And cast them adown to their people: thence they come aback and say That scarce shall ye see the houses, and no whit the wheel-worn way For the spears and shields of the Eastlands that the merchant city throng: And back to the Niblung burg-gate the ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... sheered off, and the sound of her exhaust grew rapidly fainter and fainter. But not until it had wholly ceased did Big George give over his post at the wheel. Even then he went down the ladder reluctantly, and without a word of thanks, of explanation, or of apology. With him this had been but a part of the day's work. He saw neither sentiment nor humor in the episode. The clang of the deep-throated ship's bell spoke the hour, and, ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... the real object is the relieving pain and saving life, and that is what you care for more than the honour and glory. But do you remember the fly on the coach wheel?" ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... free nor conscious in its practice, any more than is the faculty of the stomach for digestion or that of the heart for pulsation. The phases of its operations are predetermined, necessarily entailed one by another; they suggest a system of clock-work wherein one wheel set in motion brings about the movement of the next. This is the mechanical side of the insect, the fatum, the only thing which is able to explain the monstrous illogicality of a Pelopaeus when misled by my artifices. ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... those vulgar and mechanical politicians who have no place among us; a sort of people who think that nothing exists but what is gross and material, and who, therefore, far from being qualified to be directors of the great movement of empire, are not fit to turn a wheel in the machine. But to men truly initiated and rightly taught, these ruling and master principles which, in the opinion of such men as I have mentioned, have no substantial existence, are in truth everything, and all in all. Magnanimity ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... take a new machine on a very long raid. We had all examined this new aeroplane and declared it a "dud"; so we cheered Sammie up as well as we could by drinking his health and inquiring into his taste in flowers. Undismayed, Sammie took the machine off the ground, with the wheel held into his stomach; the rigging of the machine was such that it would fly on an even plane longitudinally if the wheel was kept back as far as possible. By all the laws of aeronautics this aeroplane should have crashed before leaving the ground, but it did not. Sammie ...
— Night Bombing with the Bedouins • Robert Henry Reece
... seeing that they would be upon her the next instant, turned around and ran again under the gate where she had just before passed. The hounds, in their speed, could not turn at once. Their headway took them on some distance; and then they had to wheel about, and leap once more over the upper bar of ...
— The Nursery, January 1877, Volume XXI, No. 1 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... to Grand Rapids we had to go on shore and tow our boat carefully along over the many rocks to prevent accident. Here was a small cheap looking town. On the west bank of the river a water wheel was driving a drill boring for salt water, it seemed through solid rock. Up to this time the current was slow, and its course through a dense forest. We occasionally saw an Indian gliding around in his canoe, but no houses or clearings. Occasionally we saw some pine logs which had been floated ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... instant, the carriage, fragile and ill-contrived (as, despite their graceful shapes, were, for practical uses, most of such inventions at that time), struck violently into a deep rut, over which lay a log of fallen wood; the driver, with a curse, stimulated his mules yet faster for the obstacle, the wheel was torn from the socket, and ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... are, Ned," said the cheerful voice of Davy Crockett, "an' if we want to win glory in fightin' it seems that we've got the biggest chance that was ever offered to anybody. I guess when old Santa Anna comes up he'll say: 'By nations right wheel; forward march the world.' Still these walls will help a little to make up the ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler
... flows silently down the valley, and runs across the road just in the centre of the village, stands an old mill; which for many a long year has been wont to throw out its murmuring sound, as the water falls over its broad and capacious wheel. On the other side of the stream, and just opposite the old mill, a few yards from the road, stands a neat, commodious, and well-built Methodist chapel, which, from the prominence of its situation, and good proportions, has often attracted the ...
— The Village Sunday School - With brief sketches of three of its scholars • John C. Symons
... "weakest heartes," the bookes of Cupide's artes. "Turn'd with her wheel, Senselesse themselves shal prove. Venture hath place in love. Aske ...
— Quaint Gleanings from Ancient Poetry • Edmund Goldsmid
... Charlotte, may I inquire?" asked the Reverend Mr. Goodloe in a cheerful and calm voice, though I saw that his fingers still trembled on the steering wheel as he held back the enraged gray engine. I was still speechless and I saw that father was in ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... as usual, looking grave and intent. He had gone aloft on the wheel of a clumsy great ox-cart in which some of the men had come to the auction, and he was looking over people's heads, and seeing every thing that was sold. I saw he was not ready to come away, so I was not in a hurry. ...
— An Arrow in a Sunbeam - and Other Tales • Various
... premiums to marriage, by allurements to foreigners, or by confining the natives at home, apprehends, that he has made the numbers of his people to grow, is often like the fly in the fable, who admired its success in turning the wheel, and in moving the carriage: he has only accompanied what was already in motion; he has dashed with his oar, to hasten the cataract; and waved with his fan, to ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... I was then invited to take a seat with him in an open wagon. When we were descending a slight declivity one of the horses laid his weight on the pole and broke it, although the parts did not separate. General Grant placed his foot upon the wheel, thus making a brake and saving us from a disaster. General Grant's faculties were at command on the instant and under ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 • George S. Boutwell
... laugh at his good sayings, and his mother calls him a wag. Sir David pays his suit to Miss [Emily] Tempest; but as the affections of the young lady are fixed on Henry Woodville, the baron goes to the wall.—Cumberland, The Wheel of Fortune (1779). ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... feat shortly before thought impossible on account of coal consumption, and that the screw-propeller was not generally adopted till several years afterwards. In 1855 the transatlantic liners were still paddlers; but the paddle-wheel shaft was far above the water, and so, in necessary consequence, was much of the machinery which transmitted power from the boilers to the wheel. All battle experience avouched the probability of disabling injury under such exposure; ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... Mississippi and East Louisiana all the grays who marched under the slanting bayonet or beside the cannon's wheel were gone. Left were only the "citizen" with his family and slaves, the post quartermaster and commissary, the conscript-officer, the trading Jew, the tax-in-kind collector, the hiding deserter, the jayhawker, a few wounded boys on furlough, and Harper's cavalry. Throughout ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable |
