"Whetstone" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that Isak was above taking advice from his son; Eleseus was no fool, as he showed later on. Now, in the haymaking season, he had tried his hand with the scythe—but he was no master hand at that, no. He kept close to Sivert, and had to get him to use the whetstone every time. But Eleseus had long arms and could pick up hay in first-rate fashion. And he and Sivert and Leopoldine, and Jensine the servant-maid, they were all busy now in the fields with the first lot of hay that year. Eleseus did not spare himself either, but raked away till his hands were blistered ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... to get a rig to go out home in. It's colder'n a blue whetstone, so put on all the clothes you've got. Gimme your check, and I'll get your ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... have taken place in Ferrara, during the Middle Ages. Shakespeare took it from a collection of novels, the Hecatomithi, by Giraldi Cinthio; from the play, The rare Historie of Promos and Cassandra, founded on Cinthio's novel, by one George Whetstone, and from Whetstone's prose rendering of the story in his book The Heptameron ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield
... I shouldn't wonder if he wasn't a trull's bully from Lewknor's Lane or Whetstone Park. The rascals pass themselves off as sparks of fashion at ridottos, masquerades and what not and live by robbery and blood money. I warrant I'll soon run your fine gentleman to earth. He talks about telling ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... ELIZABETH CROMWELL, aetat. 64, living at Ely, unmarried, and receiving occasional presents from her brother. She lived to 1672. (2) The Protector's sister CATHERINE, aetat. 61, first married to a Roger Whetstone, a Parliamentarian officer, and afterwards to COLONEL JOHN JONES, member of the Long Parliament for Monmouthshire, and one of the Regicides. He had been a member of the first and second Councils of the Commonwealth, had been for some time in Ireland ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... An inaccurate measure of computer performance. "In the computer industry, there are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and benchmarks." Well-known ones include Whetstone, Dhrystone, Rhealstone (see {h}), the Gabriel LISP benchmarks (see {gabriel}), the SPECmark suite, and LINPACK. See also {machoflops}, ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... "Smooth as a whetstone, straight as an arrow," meaning the cliff. Perhaps because of their pictorial descent, the characters did not shock one. Unlike the usual branding of nature, they seemed not out of keeping with the spot. Not far beyond, the butts of the winter's neve, buried in dirt, ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... air, the breezy common, the green trees; and on the occasions when she could persuade Isabel to a country ramble, she walked with dreamy eyes that saw not the cut-and-dry rusticity of Woodgreen and Whetstone, but the wild dales and the broad extant of ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... larger knowledge. "Elbridge True's got a mighty nice Alderney, an' if he's goin' to sell milk another year, he'll be glad to get two good milkers like these. What he wants is ten quarts apiece, no matter if it's bluer'n a whetstone. I guess I can swap off with him; but I don't want to run arter him. I put the case last ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... 'Slight, stay, let's see what he dare do; cut off his ears! cut a whetstone. You are an ass, do you see; touch any man here, and by this hand I'll run my rapier to the hilts ...
— Every Man In His Humor - (The Anglicized Edition) • Ben Jonson
... withal, and returned for answer, that she knew of no other books in the house than her young mistress's (as she always denominated Mistress Martha Trapbois) Bible, which the owner would not lend; and her master's Whetstone of Witte, being the second part of Arithmetic, by Robert Record, with the Cossike Practice and Rule of Equation; which promising volume Nigel declined to borrow. She offered, however, to bring him some books from Duke Hildebrod—"who sometimes, good gentleman, gave a glance at a book when the State ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... asked him to divine whether what he was thinking of could be done. After consulting the heavens, the augur replied that it could; whereupon the king said, "I was thinking that thou shouldst cut this whetstone with a razor." Navius, without a moment's hesitation, took a razor and cut it in twain. In consequence of this miracle, Tarquin gave up his design of establishing new centuries; but with each of ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... butterflies. It is about the hour of six P.M. The lounge in Hyde Park is crowded; along the road that skirts the Serpentine crawl the carriages one after the other; congregate by the rails the lazy lookers-on,—lazy in attitude, but with active eyes, and tongues sharpened on the whetstone of scandal,—the Scaligers of club windows airing their vocabulary in the Park. Slowly saunter on foot idlers of all degrees in the hierarchy of London idlesse: dandies of established-fame; youthful tyros in their first season. Yonder in the Ride, forms less inanimate seem condemned to active exercise; ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... faithful Raoul. They quarrelled for the future part of their lives in plenty, just as they had formerly quarrelled in poverty; for wrangling curs will fight over a banquet as fiercely as over a bare bone. Raoul died first, and Gillian having lost her whetstone, found that as her youthful looks decayed her wit turned somewhat blunt. She therefore prudently commenced devotee, and spent hours in long panegyrics ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... had been called on neither to march nor fight. As they lay in the woods, and the pickets, firing on the enemy's patrols, kept up a constant skirmish to the front, the laugh and jest ran down the ranks, and the unfortunate Pope, who had only seen "the backs of his enemies," served as whetstone for their wit. ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... They had now on shore a surprising quantity of all kinds of tools, goods and weapons. They had all kinds of ware to use in the kitchen, clothes, and food. Robinson prized a little four-wheeled wagon and a whetstone. ...
— An American Robinson Crusoe - for American Boys and Girls • Samuel. B. Allison
... weasel, stote, fulmart, squirrel, fitchew, and such like, which Cardan includeth under the word Mustela: also of the otter, and likewise of the beaver, whose hinder feet and tail only are supposed to be fish. Certes the tail of this beast is like unto a thin whetstone, as the body unto a monstrous rat: as the beast also itself is of such force in the teeth that it will gnaw a hole through a thick plank, or shere through a double billet in a night; it loveth also the stillest rivers, and it is given to them by nature to go by flocks unto the ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... weapon. I took possession of it, and having hidden it under my dressing-gown I conveyed it into my cell. As soon as I was alone, I took the piece of black marble, and I found that I had to my hand an excellent whetstone; for by rubbing the bar with the stone I obtained a ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... said, Mr. Jones. And I will warn you, in time, of one man in particular. His name is John Mason. Keep clear of him, if you wish to keep out of trouble. He's as smooth and oily as a whetstone; and, like a whetstone, abrades every thing he touches. He's a bad man, ...
— Off-Hand Sketches - a Little Dashed with Humor • T. S. Arthur
... was not as apparent to others as it should, by all that was consistent, have been. Lute, evidently, observed no traces of transcendent happiness, when I encountered him in the back yard, beside the woodpile, sharpening the kindling hatchet with a whetstone, a process peculiarly satisfying to his temperament because it took such a long time to ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... inexperienced. They put gold to the test when they wish to learn if it is fine. And so it is my wish, in brief, to try to prove myself, wherever I can find the test. In Britain, if I am brave, I can apply myself to the whetstone and to the real true test, whereby my prowess shall be proved. In Britain are the gentlemen whom honour and prowess distinguish. And he who wishes to win honour should associate himself with them, for honour is won ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... this view I took up my pen, and dashed off a few lines, in which I made no allusion, either to my first interview, or the affair of the dinner; but simply putting forward a few general observations on the state of the country, signed with my own name, and dated from Whetstone-park, which was, at that time, my residence. The following was the reply I received from the duke, which I print verbatim, as an index—short, but comprehensive, as an index ought to be—to the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 14, 1841 • Various
... steered their course northwards. When they came to the mouth of the Throndhjem fjord Thorberg's two brothers, Fin and Arne, were there already, with two ships each of twenty benches. Thorberg met his brothers with joy, and observed that his whetstone had taken effect; and Fin replied he seldom needed sharpening for such work. Then they proceeded north with all their forces to Throndhjem, and Stein was along with them. When they came to Agdanes, Kaff Arnason ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... the rakes and bullies of the time; "For when they expected the most polished hero in Nemours, I gave them a ruffian reeking from Whetstone's Park." Dedication to Lee's "Princess of Cleves." In his translation of Ovid's "Love Elegies," Lib. II, Eleg. XIX. Dryden mentions, ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... more: The way to Dunchurch, foul with dirt and mire, Able, I think, both man and horse to tire. On Dunsmoor Heath, a hedge doth there enclose Grounds, on the right hand, there I did repose. Wit's whetstone, Want, there made us quickly learn, With knives to cut down rushes, and green fern, Of which we made a field-bed in the field, Which sleep, and rest, and much content did yield. There with my mother earth, I thought it fit To lodge, and yet no incest did commit: My ...
— The Pennyles Pilgrimage - Or The Money-lesse Perambulation of John Taylor • John Taylor
... few and unlucky folks at the game cut their heads sheer off, or stab themselves mortally, and perish outright, and there is an end of them. But,—heaven help us!—many people have fingered those ardentes sagittas which Love sharpens on his whetstone, and are stabbed, scarred, pricked, perforated, tattooed all over with the wounds, who recovered, and live to be quite lively. Wir auch have tasted das irdische Glueck; we also have gelebt and—und so weiter. Warble your death-song, sweet Thekla! ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... not Fortune's work neither, but Nature's, who perceiveth our natural wits too dull to reason of such goddesses, and hath sent this natural for our whetstone: for always the dullness of the fool is the whetstone of the wits.— How now, wit? ...
— As You Like It • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... sound is the whetting of the scythe in the mornings of June, yet what is more lonesome and sad than the sound of a whetstone or mower's rifle when it is too late in the season to ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
... of Chief Justice Dyer, who died March 24, 1582, Whetstone gives proof that in Elizabethan England purity was the exception rather than the rule ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... "Queen Breechless," and by other satirical and insulting names. Finally he took the bold step to call himself king of Denmark and Norway, a baseless claim which he proposed to enforce. He made a vow never to use a hat until he had driven out Margaret, and sent her a whetstone several yards long, advising her to use it to sharpen her scissors and needles instead of using a sceptre. He was much too hasty, as he had only a weak hold upon Sweden even, whose nobles did not like his habit ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... but all his vows were vain, Mahound was deaf, or slept in heavens above, And as a lion strikes him with his train, His native wrath to quicken and to move, So he awaked his fury and disdain, And sharped his courage on the whetstone love; Himself he saved behind his mighty targe, And forward spurred his steed ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... The lad will sit mumchance The evening through: he's got a powerful gift Of saying nothing: no sparks to strike off him; Though he's had to serve as a whetstone, this long while, To keep an ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... observe that all the poetry of the midsummer harvesting has not gone out with the scythe and the whetstone. The line of mowers was a pretty sight, if one did not sympathize too deeply with the human backs turned up there to the sun, and the sound of the whetstone, coming up from the meadows in the dewy morning, was pleasant music. But I find the ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... bands and cords all had been divided with a sharp knife, and Uncle Bob held a piece of whetstone in his hand which had been thrown down by the door, evidently after being used by the miscreant who had ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn
... 1-1/2 inches wide, and half an inch thick. The two perforations are 2-1/2 inches apart; they have been bored from opposite sides, and show no evidence of use. Nine notches have been cut in one end of the tablet. It has been much injured by recent use as a whetstone. ...
— Illustrated Catalogue of a Portion of the Collections Made During the Field Season of 1881 • William H. Holmes
... stopped again, looked round over all that power of corn which still had to be cut and beyond, over that swarming plain, which lay scorching, so hugely far, under that merciless sun. He saw Zalia look askant because he did not go on working and, to account for his resting, drew his whetstone from his trouser-pocket and began ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... to the Bruncknow house, whose inmates were away at the time on some expedition of their own. Sometimes they saw the smoke of signal-fires over in the Dragoons; sometimes the slender columns rose from the summit of the Whetstone Mountains in the north. One morning—they had spent the previous night out here in the hills—they awoke to find a fresh trail in the bear-grass within a hundred yards of where they had been sleeping, ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... Whetstone Cakes:—Take half a pound of fine flour, and half a pound of loaf sugar searced, a spoonful of carraway-seeds dried, the yolk of one egg, the whites of three, a little rose-water, with ambergrease dissolved in it; mix it together, and roll it out as thin as a wafer; cut ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt
... I expected, and I like to deal with clever people. Did you put yourself on the whetstone before you came here? I'll go bail ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... the morning the soldiers have breakfast, then the lines are carefully arrayed a little beyond bowshot from the enemy, who are preparing themselves in similar fashion. Every man has his arms in order, his spear point and sword just from the whetstone, and every buckle made fast. The general (probably in sight of all the men) will cause the seers to kill a chicken, and examine its entrails. "The omens are good; the color is favorable; the gods are with us!"[*] he announces; and then, since he is a Greek among ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... bosom, Odin proceeded to sharpen the nine scythes, skilfully giving them such a keen edge that the thralls, delighted, begged that they might have the stone. With good-humoured acquiescence, Odin tossed the whetstone over the wall; but as the nine thralls simultaneously sprang forward to catch it, they wounded one another with their keen scythes. In anger at their respective carelessness, they now began to fight, and did not pause until ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... their principal canons of faith, and the one best observed in practice, is (or at any rate used to be) that a man is bound to wear ear-rings. For these, as sure tradition shows, and no pious mariner would dare to doubt, act as a whetstone in all weathers to the keen edge of the eyes. Semble—as the lawyers say—that this idea was born of great phonetic facts in the days when a seaman knew his duty better than the way to spell it; and when, ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... these was only a little thing,—a failure to keep shaved. Shaving in these surroundings, without a mirror, with a battered old razor that had lain long in the cabin and had to be sharpened on a whetstone, where every drop of hot water used had to be laboriously heated on the stove, was an annoying chore at best: besides, there was no one to see him except Virginia and the guide. The stubble matted and ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... would, we could see no signs of Flossie and her donkey, so at last we had to come down disappointed. On reaching the veranda I found Umslopogaas sitting there, slowly and lightly sharpening his axe with a small whetstone he always carried ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... educators—they fill one with discontent and drive a person onward and upward to the ideal. A whetstone is dull, but it ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... through all the vicissitudes of fortune. At first he was a true representative of the ancient Mime, but afterwards degenerated into a booby and a gourmand, the perpetual butt for a sharp-witted fellow, his companion, called Brighella; the knife and the whetstone. Harlequin, under the reforming hand of Goldoni, became a child of nature, the delight of his country; and he has commemorated the historical character of the great Harlequin Sacchi. It may serve the reader to correct his notions of one, from the absurd pretender with us who has usurped ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... your gunbearer with a cartridge belt, a leather or canvas carrying bag, water bottle for him and for yourself, a sheath knife and a whetstone. In the bag are your camera, tape line, the whetstone, field cleaners and lunch. You personally carry your field glasses, sun glasses, a knife, compass, matches, police whistle and notebook. The field glasses should ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... few other buccaneers in their stronghold at New Providence Island in 1660, withstood an attack by a Spanish fleet for five days. The three English captains, Stanley, Sir Thomas Whetstone, and Major Smith, were carried to Panama and there cast into a dungeon and bound in irons ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... devout servant of the fair sex, a witty-brained, prompt, and accomplished courtier. Rather thank heaven, Piercie Shafton, which hath sent thee a subject, wherein, without derogating from thy rank, (since the honours of the Avenel family are beyond dispute,) thou mayest find a whetstone for thy witty compliments, a strop whereon to sharpen thine acute engine, a butt whereat to shoot the arrows of thy gallantry. For even as a Bilboa blade, the more it is rubbed, the brighter and the sharper will it prove, so—But what need I waste my stock of similitudes ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... multitude of ignorant people. Feare God: be true to thy Prince: and obey the Lawes. At London. Printed by Richarde Jones, dwelling at the Signe of the Rose and Crowne, neere Holborne bridge, 1587, 4to. The author was George Whetstone. An Address to the Reader signed T. C. [Thomas Churchyard] sets forth that "my good friend M. G. W. at his departure into the Country, left this most honest work to be censured by me; being right well assured, by the continuance of our true friendshippes, that I would not deceiue him ...
— Kemps Nine Daies Wonder - Performed in a Daunce from London to Norwich • William Kemp
... great knife, and, coming up to these poor children, sharpened it upon a great whetstone which he held in his left hand. He had already taken hold of one of them when his wife ...
— The Tales of Mother Goose - As First Collected by Charles Perrault in 1696 • Charles Perrault
... wit," or gagging of the comic actors, was indispensably necessary. The "comedians of Ravenna," who were not "tied to any written device," but who, nevertheless, had "certain grounds or principles of their own," are mentioned in Whetstone's "Heptameron," 1582, and references to such performers are also to be found in Kyd's "Spanish Tragedy," and Ben Jonson's "Case is Altered." In "Antony and Cleopatra" ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... may neuer light vpon this land, but may be auerted and turned away from all christian kingdomes, through his mercie, whose wrath by sinne being set on fire, is like a consuming flame; and the swoord of whose vengeance being sharpened with the whetstone of mens wickednesse, shall hew them in peeces as ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (7 of 8) - The Seventh Boke of the Historie of England • Raphael Holinshed
... large wound in his face, and another in his arm, while he in person attempted to board the French admiral. Exasperated at the treachery of his captains, he granted a commission to rear-admiral Whetstone and other officers, to hold a court-martial and try them for cowardice. Hudson, of the Pendennis, died before his trial: Kirby and Wade were convicted, and sentenced to be shot: Constable, of the Windsor, was cashiered and imprisoned: Vincent, of the Falmouth, and Fogg, the admiral's ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... all callings is not to be disliked, 'tis ingeniorum cos, as one calls it, the whetstone of wit, the nurse of wit and valour, and those noble Romans out of this spirit did brave exploits. There is a modest ambition, as Themistocles was roused up with the glory of ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... Mr. Burne-Jones' desertion of his old associates, as it would survive art itself. I for one should regret its disappearance. It is a whetstone for wit, like everything established and respectable. I am only sorry we have no Academy of Letters. It gives one such a standing not to be a member—almost as good a standing as to be one. If you are left out in the cold you loudly pity those ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... stout shoes, for footmen. 1 pair boots, for horsemen. 1 pair shoes, for horsemen. 3 towels. 1 gutta percha poncho. 1 broad-brimmed hat of soft felt. 1 comb and brush. 2 tooth-brushes. 1 pound Castile soap. 3 pounds bar soap for washing clothes. 1 belt-knife and small whetstone. Stout linen thread, large needles, a bit of beeswax, a few buttons, paper of pins, and a thimble, all contained in a small buckskin ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy
... itself. Around in all directions were basilicae, or halls of justice; porticoes filled with busy lawyers; bankers' shops glittering with their splendid wares, and bedecked with the golden shields taken from the Samnites; statues of the renowned of ages, Accius Naevius, who cut the whetstone with the razor; Horatius Cocles on his thunderstricken pedestal, halting on one knee from the wound which had not hindered him from swimming the swollen Tiber; Claelia the hostage on her brazen steed; and many another, handed ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... via underground comix, and into early hackerdom either from the counterculture or from SF fandom (the three overlapped heavily at the time). More recently, the h infix has become an expected feature of benchmark names (Dhrystone, Rhealstone, etc.); this is prob. patterning on the original Whetstone (the name of a laboratory) but influenced by the ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... Kotkell was the name of a man who had only come to Iceland a short time before, Grima was the name of his wife. Their sons were Hallbjorn Whetstone-eye, and Stigandi. These people were natives of Sodor. They were all wizards and the greatest of enchanters. Hallstein Godi took them in and settled them down at Urdir in Skalm-firth, and their dwelling there was none of the best ...
— Laxdaela Saga - Translated from the Icelandic • Anonymous
... being Mr. Kumball. My Lord, among other discourse, did tell us of his great difficultys passed in the business of the Sound, and of his receiving letters from the King there, but his sending them by Whetstone was a great folly; and the story how my Lord being at dinner with Sydney, one of his fellow plenipotentiarys and his mortal enemy, did see Whetstone, and put off his hat three times to him, but the fellow would not be known, which my Lord imputed to his coxcombly ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... now. Sure I shall be out of your Clutches one Day.—Well, Guardian, I say no more; but if you be not as errant a Cuckold, as e're drove Bargain upon the Exchange, or paid Attendance to a Court; I am the Son of a Whetstone; and ...
— The Busie Body • Susanna Centlivre
... their theories but rest upon the basis of fair probability. Even when we reject their reasonings, we are pleased with their ingenuity; and they serve, to borrow an expression from Horace, "the purpose of a whetstone." But M. Langevin has nothing farther to offer, than gratuitous assertion or vague conjecture; and yet, upon the faith of these, he insists upon our believing, that the foundation of Falaise took place very shortly after the deluge; that its name is derived from Fele, the cat ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... then unstirred and immoveable. Some make ready to march afoot over the plains; some, mounted on tall horses, ride amain in clouds of dust. All seek out arms; and now they rub their shields smooth and make their spearheads glitter with [627-659]fat lard, and grind their axes on the whetstone: rejoicingly they advance under their standards and hear the trumpet note. Five great cities set up the anvil and sharpen the sword, strong Atina and proud Tibur, Ardea and Crustumeri, and turreted Antemnae. They hollow out head-gear to guard them, and plait wickerwork ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... at once, Whose head, too hot for hellebore to cool, Was ne'er submitted to a barber's tool. What ails me now, to dose myself each spring? Else had I been a very swan to sing. Well, never mind: mine be the whetstone's lot, Which makes steel sharp, though cut itself will not. Although no writer, I may yet impart To writing folk the precepts of their art, Whence come its stores, what trains and forms a bard, And how a work is ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... that, we might make shift, I have a little, though not much; but I tell you there's no stirring on the road. I know a couple of poor honest men in our street have attempted to travel, and at Barnet, or Whetstone, or thereabouts, the people offered to fire at them if they pretended to go forward, so they are come ...
— A Journal of the Plague Year • Daniel Defoe
... will come of it, lad,' said he. 'They are all sharpening themselves, each after his own fashion, on the whetstone of religion. This arguing breedeth fanatics, and fanatics are the stuff out of which conquerors are fashioned. Have you not heard how Old Noll's army divided into Presbyterians, Independents, Ranters, Anabaptists, Fifth Monarchy men, Brownists, ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... he said, when I had signified my eagerness to hear, "that I graduated at Leroy College. It was a little one-horse institution, but blue as a whetstone in its orthodoxy; and with my father, who was a clergyman of a very strait sect and staid views, that fact covered a multitude of shortcomings. I was nineteen when I entered, and consequently twenty when, at the beginning of sophomore year, I came under the charge of Professor Regnier. He was ...
— A Positive Romance - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... be carefully distinguished and circumspectly handled by those who do not desire or cannot afford to throw away their money. The names above cited are themselves very unequal; some, like Breton, Churchyard, Whetstone, Barnfield, Watson, and Constable, are sought, and will ever be sought, by reason of their peculiar rarity; and, save in a sentimental way, no one would probably dream of placing Beaumont, Chapman, ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... were located at the same crossroads, and these two institutions drew for their constituency from an area of about four square miles for the school and a somewhat larger area for the church. Brownstown school, to the south, Hendrickson's to the east, and Whetstone to the west made up other school communities. Pleasant Grove church, Salem, and Brownstown, with a different territory covered by each, made up church areas that did not coincide with the school areas bounding Mifflin Center school territory. In like manner, when trading was ...
— Church Cooperation in Community Life • Paul L. Vogt
... also useful as a whetstone upon which you sharpen your wits. William Morris had nothing on me when I added Jarvis ...
— Bambi • Marjorie Benton Cooke
... expert swordsman might catch his foeman's blade, and by a quick turn of his wrist might snap it across. Alleyne, on the other hand, must trust for his defence to his quick eye and active foot—for his sword, though keen as a whetstone could make it, was of a light and graceful build with a narrow, sloping ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Bertram; "it has ever been a favourite whetstone for the human reason. It has been frequently solved to the satisfaction of the performer, but no solution has yet won the universal acceptance that is the badge ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer
... in the prime of life, and had a young wife and one little baby. He was professedly a sceptic, and gloried in his creed—if he can be said to have any creed who believes in nothing but himself. Of course the Bible to him was simply a whetstone on which to "sharpen his tongue like a serpent, that he might shoot out his arrows, even bitter words." As for conscience, he ridiculed the very idea of such an old- fashioned guide and monitor. "No," he would say, "as a true musician abhors discordant sounds, and as a skilled mechanic ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... preserved a reverence for religion, and for religious men. I always called another cause, when any of my libertine companions, in pursuance of Lord Shaftesbury's test (which is a part of the rake's creed, and what I may call the whetstone of infidelity,) endeavoured to turn the sacred subject into ridicule. On this very account I have been called by good men of the clergy, who nevertheless would have it that I was a practical rake, the decent rake: and ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... with millet were the dishes, And long and curved were the spoons of thorn-wood. The way to Ku was like a whetstone, And straight as an arrow. (So) the officers trod it, And the common people looked on it. When I look back and think of it, My tears run down ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... used to visit the house of an old woman, who, when he was coming, very prudently hid whatever she had to eat. One day coming with some friends, he asked her if she had not some meat. And she said, 'Nay.' 'Well,' quoth the friar, 'have you not a whetstone?' 'Yea,' quoth the woman, 'what will you do with it?' 'Marry,' quoth he, 'I would make meat thereof.' Then she brought a whetstone. He asked her likewise if she had not a frying-pan. 'Yea,' said she, 'but what the ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... stomach? I have been wallowing in the slough of despond for a week and my digestive apparatus has gone wrong again. I have suffered tortures that would have done credit to the inventive genius of a Dante, and the natural consequence is that I am as blue as a whetstone." ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... "A whetstone is no carving instrument, But yet it maketh sharpe carving tooles; And, if thou know'st that I have aught miswent,* *erred, failed Eschew thou that, for such thing to thee school* is. *schooling, lesson Thus oughte wise men to beware ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... mead and ate and drank. Then Eric washed himself, combed out his golden locks, and looked well to his harness and to Whitefire's edge. Skallagrim also ground his great axe upon the whetstone in the yard, singing as he ground. When all was ready, the horses were caught, and Eric ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard
... I; 'we are the very pink and perfection of the true Attic' 'Done with you!' says Callicles, 'frequent quizzings are a whetstone of conversation' 'For my part,' cries Eudemus, '—it grows chill—I like my liquor stronger, and more of it; I am deathly cold; if I could get some warmth into me, I had rather listen to these light- ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... into his present quarters. That implement he had fashioned for himself with infinite pains out of a door-bolt some twenty inches long, which he had found discarded in a rubbish-heap in a corner of the attic where he had been allowed to take his brief daily exercise. Using as a whetstone a small slab of black marble, similarly acquired, he had shaped that bolt into a ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... his horseman's coat, while he stood entranced by the splendour of the Lord Mayor's Show. Money-droppers, sore from the cart's tail, introduced themselves to him, and appeared to him the most honest friendly gentlemen that he had ever seen. Painted women, the refuse of Lewkner Lane and Whetstone Park, passed themselves on him for countesses and maids of honour. If he asked his way to St. James', his informants sent him to Mile End. If he went into a shop, he was instantly discerned to be a fit purchaser of everything that nobody else would buy, of ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... despite the interludes of literary history, as full of Borrow's peculiar conversational gift as any of its predecessors. Its thumbnail sketches, if somewhat more subdued and less elaborate, are not less full of character. John Jones, the Dissenting weaver, who served Borrow at once as a guide and a whetstone of Welsh in the neighbourhood of Llangollen; the "kenfigenous" Welshwoman who first, but by no means last, exhibited the curious local jealousy of a Welsh-speaking Englishman; the doctor and the Italian barometer-seller at Cerrig-y-Druidion; the "best Pridydd of the world" in Anglesey, with ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... side of the mountain, found a bit of coarse stone which John and he used as a whetstone to sharpen up their knives. They knew well enough that work on the coarse surface of a bear-hide dulls a knife very quickly. It was an hour or two before their leader was satisfied with the preparation of ...
— The Young Alaskans in the Rockies • Emerson Hough
... standing in front of the big red brick wall one bright winter's day, for the time had gone by very quickly. Old Brownsmith had a sharp knife in his hand, and I was holding the whetstone and a thin-bladed saw that he used to cut ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... Captain Cy, pushing forward a rocker. "My! but I'm glad to see you. 'Twas bluer'n a whetstone 'round ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... representative of the ancient Mime; but, during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, he degenerated into a booby and a gourmand, the perpetual butt for a sharp-witted fellow, his companion, Brighella, the knife and the whetstone. Harlequin, however, under the reforming hand of Goldoni, became, in after years, a child of nature, and the delight of his country; and he has commemorated the historical character of the great Harlequin Sacchi. It may serve the reader ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... an intermediary is commonly conjectured. The novel from Cinthio's Hecatommithi which formed the basis of Othello existed in a French translation; and his form of the plot of Measure for Measure came to Shakespeare through the English dramatic version of George Whetstone. The version of the bond story in The Merchant of Venice closest to the play is in Il Pecorone of Sir Giovanni Fiorentino, but the tale is widespread. Incidents in The Merry Wives have sources or parallels in the same work, in Straparola's Piacevoli Notti, ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson
... had come in during the discussion. He seated himself, and recommenced his favorite task of stropping his knife upon a whetstone. At the Cockney's last ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... the best kind of willow for the purpose, and the exact time of year when the bark will slip. The country boy seems to know these things by instinct. When the day for whistles arrives he puts away marbles and hunts the whetstone. His jackknife must be in good shape, for the making of a whistle is a delicate piece of handicraft. The knife has seen service in mumblepeg and as nut pick since whistle-making time last year. Surrounded ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... book, and one, as Panaetius tells Tubero, worth learning by heart. And these men used to say that those agitations were very profitably given to our minds by nature; fear, in order that we may take care; pity and melancholy they called the whetstone of our clemency; and anger itself that of our courage. Whether they were right or wrong we may consider another time. How it was that those stern doctrines of yours forced their way into the Old Academy I do not know, but I cannot bear them; not because they have anything in them particularly disagreeable ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... down, but on second thoughts he shouted peremptorily to the peasants instead, and beckoned to them to come up. The wind, that seemed to blow as they drove, dropped when the carriage stood still; gadflies settled on the steaming horses that angrily shook them off. The metallic clank of a whetstone against a scythe, that came to them from the cart, ceased. One of the peasants got up and came ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... intrewde myself when they was a settling of the himportant bizziness as they was cum about, so I strolled off to a little willage as I seed in the distance, and which is acshally called Egipt, tho it ain't much bigger than Whetstone Park, Hobern, the ome of my herly birth! From a rayther hurryed conwersashun with a real Native, I gathered the himportant fack that the one reason why all the great big Beach Trees of the Forest had had their tops cut off, was, that OLIWER CROMWEEL wanted the bows for his sojers to carry, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, November 15, 1890 • Various
... Apaches, who had been raiding in Sonora, into the Whetstone Mountains, where they called a parley. The Apaches were summoned to camp under a white flag; and feeling perfectly innocent of having committed a crime against the Americans, fearlessly presented themselves before Lieutenant Bascomb and his boys ...
— Building a State in Apache Land • Charles D. Poston
... hurted so bad," said Uncle Remus, putting an edge upon his axe with a whetstone held in his hand, "hit wuz a mighty long time 'fo' he could ramble 'roun' en worry ole Brer Rabbit. Der time Cousin Wildcat fetch'd 'im dat wipe 'cross de stomach, he tuck'n lay de blame on Brer Rabbit, en w'en he git well, he des tuck'n juggle wid de yuther creeturs, ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... sleck stone," I take to mean a "jagged whetstone," very unfit for its purpose; but what is the force of the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 74, March 29, 1851 • Various
... Ayliffe is for AElfgifu or AEthelgifu and Goodliffe from Godleof (cf. Ger. Gottlieb). The older form of Stone appears in Staines, Stanhope, Stanton, etc. Wheatstone is either for "white stone" or for the local Whetstone (Middlesex). In Balderstone, Johnston, Edmondstone, Livingstone, the suffix is -ton, though the frequence of Johnston points to corruption from Johnson, just as in Nottingham we have the converse case of Beeson from the local Beeston. In Hailstone the first element ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... with the speed and skill with which this was done, and they all called out together to ask if the whetstone was ...
— Told by the Northmen: - Stories from the Eddas and Sagas • E. M. [Ethel Mary] Wilmot-Buxton
... to most of what surrounds him, any greatly gifted, and tough, English youth is likely to become more and more aware of himself and his own isolation. While his French compeer is having rough corners gently obliterated by contact with a well-oiled whetstone, and is growing daily more conscious of solidarity with his partners in a peculiar and gracious civilization, the English lad grows steadily more individualistic. Daily he becomes more eccentric, more adventurous, and more of a "character." Very easily will he snap all conventional cables and, ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... and none other like him: a little, great man, a man of cunning plots and contrivances, very bold and determined and crafty beyond words. He is moreover a notable good seaman and commander, quick of hand and eye. Dangers and difficulty are but a whetstone to set a keener edge to his abilities. He was once a chief of buccaneers and is now a baronet of England and justice of the peace, aye, and I think a member of His ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... millet were the dishes, And long and curved were the spoons of thorn-wood. The way to Kau was like a whetstone, And straight as an arrow. (So) the officers trod it, And the common people looked on it. When I look back and think of it, My tears ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... reserve of the miracles at fountains than of the others they have to record, and even bring them down to modern times. Many of them may be found recorded in his usual slipshod manner in the amiable pages of Butler—as, for instance, in the life of St Winfrid (November 3), where we are told how "Roger Whetstone, a Quaker, near Bromsgrove, by bathing at Holywell, was cured of an inveterate lameness and palsy by which he was converted to the Catholic faith." Some of the old saints' wells, remote from cities and ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... vice; and at the same time a knife slipped out of his sleeve into the other hand. He jerked the surprised Garth halfway round; and aimed a blow between his shoulders. Garth was oddly conscious of the fresh marks of the whetstone on the blade of the knife. With the incredible swiftness of our subconscious moves, he dropped his useless gun; and twisting his body around, flung up his free hand, and warded the descending blow. Seizing Mabyn's wrist, he flung himself forward to ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... face of all his foes, the Cruscan quire, And Boileau, whose rash envy could allow No strain which shamed his country's creaking lyre, That whetstone of the teeth—monotony in ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... a stone were ground to dust; as if white sparks flew from a livid whetstone, which was his spine; as if the switchback railway, having swooped to the depths, fell, fell, fell. This was ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf |
