"Axe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... pulled their jackets Hastily from their backs; One climbed the tree like a squirrel, With a ball-bat for an axe And he hewed at the beautiful branches With frantic ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... twelve miles of the place,) to the woods, where they were chained, with but little clothing, and exposed day and night in the open air; one of the persons so confined released himself from the tree to which he was attached and with an axe extricated the others. The woman above alluded to has since arrived and gave the information, and in addition says, they have pits to conceal their captives when close pursuit is apprehended, which they cover with earth and leaves. It may be asked, as the persons are known, ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... was then found necessary to obtain an axe to open, as we shall see, the cases containing the money. The notary went with the woman Bryond to Saint-Savin, where they searched in vain for an axe. The notary returned alone; half way back he met Hiley, ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... at the head of the cove, near the run of fresh water, which stole silently along through a very thick wood, the stillness of which had then, for the first time since the creation, been interrupted by the rude sound of the labourer's axe, and the downfall of its ancient inhabitants; a stillness and tranquillity which from that day were to give place to the voice of labour, the confusion of camps and towns, and 'the busy hum of its new possessors.' ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... them into potatoes, or whatever might be the fashionable food at the moment; every grumbler who imagined that every rise in prices must be entirely due to the malignity of men and not to the scarcity of the article; every politician with a grudge to satisfy or an axe to grind—all these pounced upon Lord DEVONPORT as a victim made ready to their hands, and gave him a time which can only be described as a very bad one. Add to this the mistakes almost necessarily made by an office which ...
— Punch, 1917.07.04, Vol. 153, Issue No. 1 • Various
... territory of the Warramunga tribe the ghosts of black-snake people are supposed to gather in the rocks round certain pools or in the gum-trees which border the generally dry bed of a water-course. No Warramunga woman would dare to strike one of these trees with an axe, because she is firmly convinced that in doing so she would set free one of the lurking black-snake spirits, who would immediately dart into her body. They think that the spirits are no larger than grains of sand and that they make their way into women through the navel. Nor is it merely by direct ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... course knew that crest of an armed hand clasping a battle-axe, and knew that it belonged to Henry Dunbar. The banker appeared so very seldom in public that there was always a kind of curiosity about him when he did show himself; and between the races, people who were strolling upon the ground contrived to ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... not the unimportant parts. Woman's sovereignty has been long deferred, because of the preparation necessary for it. A John the Baptist must precede the Christ in the wilderness. Fiends robed and sceptred, once reigned over fiends clothed in skins and armed with broadsword and battle axe. To-day a gentleman, or gentlewoman can sit secure on any throne of Christendom. While we congratulate ourselves, let us not deny that the Tamerlanes, the Alarics, the Napoleons have had their share in the intermediate work ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... cleverly manoeuvred to our assistance by the steward, who swam off to her pluckily. Our next endeavour was to release the captain, who was entangled under the boat. As it was impossible to right her, we set-to to split her side open with the boat hook, because by awful bad luck the head of the axe we had flew off at the first blow and was lost. The rescue took thirty minutes, and the extricated captain was in a pitiable condition, being badly bruised and having swallowed a lot of salt water. He was unconscious. While at that work the submarine came to the surface quite ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... packs on their backs, sling their blankets into place, and pick up their little fishing-rods, unjointed and compactly packed in cloth cases. Lew buckled the pistol to his belt and suspended the canteen from his shoulder, while Charley sheathed his little axe and hung it on his hip. Then, completely ready, the two lads waved farewell to their envious comrades and hastened away to the train. In less than an hour the train stopped to let them off at the little flag-station at the foot of Stone Mountain. In a moment more it had gone whistling around the ...
— The Young Wireless Operator—As a Fire Patrol - The Story of a Young Wireless Amateur Who Made Good as a Fire Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... would lazily implore his patron saint to enjoin that unreliable devilish force within lest the dolce far niente of the afternoon be disturbed, for siestas are among the most important functions in the life of that region. Occasionally the more enterprising would arm themselves with pick-axe and shovel, made bold by whispered stories of fabulous wealth, and, defying the evil spirits protecting it, they would set out on an expedition of loot and desecration of the tomb ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... us making merry at a friend's house in a country village, when the sexton of the parish church entered the room in a sort of surprise, and told us "that, as he was digging a grave in the chancel, a little blow of his pick-axe opened a decayed coffin, in which there were several written papers." Our curiosity was immediately raised, so that we went to the place where the sexton had been at work, and found a great concourse of people about the grave. Among the rest there was an old woman, who told us the person ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele
... cypress-swamps. Before the cheniere all the shell-beach slope was piled with wreck—uptorn trees with the foliage still fresh upon them, splintered timbers of mysterious origin, and logs in multitude, scarred with gashes of the axe. Feliu and his comrades had saved wood enough to build a little town,—working up to their waists in the surf, with ropes, poles, and boat-hooks. The whole sea was full of flotsam. Voto a Cristo!—what a wrecking there ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... Neal O'Caharney, whose family he had slain, all save one; and then it adds: 'Sir Hugh came one day, with three Englishmen, that he might show them the castle, when there came to him a youth of the men of Meath—a certain Gilla Naher O'Mahey, foster-brother of O'Caharney himself—with his battle-axe concealed beneath his cloak, and while De Lacy was reading the petition he gave him, he dealt him such a blow that his head flew off many yards away, both head and body being afterwards buried in the ditch ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... with steel edges like those of the ancient Romans, and carried ashen lances ten feet long, with straight and sharp iron spikes: only one-fourth of their number bore halberts instead of lances, the spikes cut into the form of an axe and surmounted by a four-cornered spike, to be used both for cutting like an axe and piercing like a bayonet: the first row of each battalion wore helmets and cuirasses which protected the head and chest, and when the men were drawn up for battle they presented ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... times that her head might be smitten off with an axe upon a block for the love of our Lord Jesu. Then said our Lord Jesu in her mind: "I thank thee, daughter, that thou wouldest die for My love; for as often as thou thinkest so, thou shalt have the same meed in heaven, as if thou suffredest ...
— The Cell of Self-Knowledge - Seven Early English Mystical Treaties • Various
... boles are to be noted. A reader may smile at the phrase "expression," but look at a tattered old birch, or a silvery young beech-hole, "modest and maidenly, clean of limb," or a lightning-scarred pine. Tree-study has advantages because it is always within reach. The axe has been so ruthlessly wielded that you must go far into the woods to get the best specimens of the pine, and the forests about our Maine lakes and in the Adirondacks have been sadly despoiled of their aristocrats. To see trees ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell
... pusillanimous king offered up the gallant seaman as a sacrifice to the revengeful Spaniards, or rather to their ambassador, Gondomar. Cheerful to the last, the noble Raleigh bade farewell to all around him; then, taking the axe, he felt along upon the edge, and smiling, said to the sheriff, "This is a sharp medicine, but it is a physician for all diseases." On being asked which way he would lay himself, he placed his head on the block, ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... may be narrow at times, with nothing between it and a gulf, and it may be pitched at an angle that compels the use of "all-fours;" but with patience and discretion the ultimate peak is conquered without rope-ladder or ice-axe, and the vastness of the world below, gray and cold at some hours, and at others lighted with a splendor which words cannot transcribe, is revealed to the adventurer as ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... north, from Kama-kama, we entered into dense Mohonono bush, which required the constant application of the axe by three of our party for two days. This bush has fine silvery leaves, and the bark has a sweet taste. The elephant, with his usual delicacy of taste, feeds much on it. On emerging into the plains beyond, ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... or so the thatch burned on in silence. Then from within the building came the sound of an axe crashing, stroke on stroke, upon the posts and timbers of the roof. Some madman was bringing down the barn-roof upon him to save the house. The man at the window ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... board for half an hour, during which time he had been greatly caressed, in order to induce him to give a favourable account of us to his companions, he was taken half way towards the shore in our boat, and then launched upon his log, to which was lashed an axe, and around his neck a bag was suspended containing biscuits, and a little of everything that he appeared to fancy or be amused with during his ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... yesterday; and as to knowing the cause of her being out of sorts like, perhaps I do, and perhaps I don't. I has my suspicions, and pretty strong ones they be, too; but it ain't for the likes of me to say a word. Axe no questions, Harry, my lad, but just leave things to work theirselves out; she'll be all right again shortly, you take my ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... say, and they know me and hang around the door for crumbs, and that beauty of a Wyandock, you couldn't eat him!" When the matter is decided, as the guillotining is going on, Ellen and I sit listening to the axe thuds and the death squaks, while she wrings her hands, saying: "O dearie me! What a world—the dear Lord ha' mercy on us poor creatures! What a thing to look into, that we must kill the poor innocents to eat them. And they were so tame ...
— Adopting An Abandoned Farm • Kate Sanborn
... of temperate North America, but a very shy and solitary bird, who will not be neighborly and is oftener heard than seen in the bogs where he likes to live alone. He makes a loud noise that sounds like chopping wood with an axe or driving a stake in the ground with a mallet; so he is called the Stake-driver by some people, while others name him Thunder-pumper and Bog-bull. His body is about as big as a Hen's, and he is sometimes known as Indian Hen, though ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... axe in hand, through my park, which is as dense and impenetrable as the virgin forests of America, or the jungles of India. It has not been touched for sixty years, and I have sworn to break the head of the first gardener who dares to approach ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... English wife. He was always ready to give his successor advice, and became more and more intolerant in religious questions. "Tell the Grand Inquisitor from me," he wrote, "to be at his post and lay the axe to the root of the tree before it spreads further. I rely on your zeal for bringing the guilty to punishment and for having them punished without favour to anyone, with all the severity which their crimes demand." After this impressive ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... pretended: it was the brief moment, grotesque and pathetic, when the doomed classes of society, who were fatally going to be exterminated for their long selfishness and indifference, enthusiastically caught up pick-axe and shovel and tore down the bricks of the edifice which was destined to fall and to crush them ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... many pretty villas, peeping through garden shrubberies; whilst further down are the straggling habitations of the more recent settlers, surrounded by clear patches, with difficulty won from the forest by the axe and the firebrand. On the whole, therefore, it may be said that art and nature combine to render beautiful the scenery on the ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... porch, wearing his fur-lined short mantle, his collar, and golden spurs, and the decoration won so many years before; all the insignia of his rank. He walked; his war-horse, fully caparisoned, with axe at the saddle-bow, was led at his right side, and upon the other came a knight carrying the banneret ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... think it more humane to kill a man by inches rather than by a single blow of the axe. Not so with Herbert's friends; the first news that greeted him on landing were, that his ever-remembered Cecilia was probably at that moment before the altar pledging her vows ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... represented by hearts, fish by clubs, fowl by diamonds, and baked-meat by spades. The king of hearts ruled a noble sirloin of roast-beef; the monarch of clubs presided over a pickled herring; and the king of diamonds reared his battle-axe over a turkey; while his brother of spades smiled benignantly on ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... of the most remarkable features of the palace began to disclose themselves. About halfway along the court were found two small rooms, connected with one another, in the centre of each of which stood a single column composed of four gypsum blocks, each block marked with the sign of the Double Axe; and these pillars suggested a connection with ancient traditions about Minos and his works (Plate XI.). They were apparently sacred emblems connected with the worship of a divinity, and the Double Axe markings pointed to the divinity in question. For the ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... something queer, and one or two tumbles either with or from his horse. Very little is known of the interior except that it is covered with forest matted together by lianas, and with an undergrowth of scrub bamboo impenetrable except to the axe, varied by swamps equally impassable, which give rise to hundreds of rivers well stocked with fish. The glare of volcanoes is seen in different parts of the island. The forests are the hunting-grounds of the Ainos, who are complete savages in everything but their ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... followers of Mahng had abandoned many things in their hasty flight which now proved of the utmost value, and a welcome addition to the limited outfit of Donald and Atoka. Among these things were several blankets, an axe, ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... went. With the resolution of pioneers, however, they began the journey. At the end of several days they had gone but eighteen miles. Abraham Lincoln was then but seven years old, but was already accustomed to the use of axe and gun. He lent a willing hand, and bore his share in the labor and fatigue connected with the difficult journey. In after years he said that he had never passed through a more trying experience than when he ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... forms, in the Teutonic languages, and akin to the Greek [Greek: axine]; the New English Dictionary prefers the spelling "ax"), a tool or weapon, taking various shapes, but, when not compounded with some distinguishing word (e.g. in "pick-axe"), generally formed [v.03 p.0068] by an edged head fixed upon a handle for striking. A "hatchet" is a small sort ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... to be extracted from all this. But frankly my ethics are so mixed that I fail to see where the blame lies, and which is the less worthy individual, the ostentatious axe-grinding host or the interested guest. One thing, however, I see clearly, viz., that life is very agreeable to him who starts in with few prejudices, good manners, a large amount of well-concealed "cheek" and the happy faculty of taking things ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... resembles the bean in the nursery tale,—let it once take root, and it will grow so rapidly, that in the course of a few hours the giant Imagination builds a castle on the top, and by and by comes Disappointment with the "curtal axe," and hews down both the plant and the superstructure. Jeanie's fancy, though not the most powerful of her faculties, was lively enough to transport her to a wild farm in Northumberland, well stocked with milk-cows, yeald beasts, and sheep; a meeting-house, ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... his coat turned over his head. His knife had gone from his pocket and his hat was lost, though he had tied it under his chin. He recalled that he had been looking for loose stones to raise his piece of the shelter wall. His ice-axe had disappeared. ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... consummated within the Palace. Her wailings reproach her patron and lover Apollo, who has conducted her to a house of blood; she sees the past murders that have stained the house, she sees the preparations for the present deed, the bath, the net, the axe; then her wailings wax yet wilder as she sees that she herself is to be included in the sacrifice. Meantime her excitement gradually passes over to the Chorus: at first they have mistaken her cries for the ordinary lamentations of captives (and borne ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... You axe me, sir, to sling sum ink for your paper in regards to the new Irish dramy at Niblo's Garding. ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 7 • Charles Farrar Browne
... Return, O lark! to thy grassy nest, in the furrow of the green brairded corn, for thy brooding mate can no longer hear thee soaring in the sky. Methinks there is little or no change on these coppice-woods, with their full budding branches all impatient for the spring. Yet twice have axe and bill-hook levelled them with the mossy stones, since among the broomy and briery knolls we sought the grey linnet's nest, or wondered to spy, among the rustling leaves, the robin-redbreast, seemingly forgetful of his winter benefactor, man. Surely there were trees here in former times, ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... had a wife and six children. Stebney testified that he had not been used hard, though he had been on the "auction-block three times." Left because he was "tired of being a servant." Armed with a broad-axe and hatchet, he started, joined by the above-named companions, and came in a skiff, by sea. Robert Lee was the brave Captain engaged to pilot this Slavery-sick party from the prison-house of bondage. And although every rod ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... according to Aristotle, is the realization or actualization or form of the body. The body takes the place of matter in the human composite. It has the composition and the structure which give it the capacity for performing the functions of a human being, as in any other composite, say an axe, the steel is the matter which has the potentiality or capacity of being made into a cutting instrument. Its cutting function is the form of the axe—we might almost say the soul of the axe, if it were not for the ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... two people carrying golf clubs had passed along the monotonous road during the morning and Max had longed to be a caddie. Once a woodcutter had gone along with his axe over his shoulder and Lynn had been moved to recite—to the disgust of the others—"Woodman, spare that tree." And once Larkin had flashed past on horseback, Howie tearing along not far behind, it having come to their ears five minutes before that a cottage far away through the bush was opened, ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... small colony of convicts first made the forests ring with the blows of the axe, and a few tents were erected where Sydney now stands. The tents, and they who dwelt beneath them, have long since disappeared, and instead we have one of the finest cities that our ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... and being called ongodly thieves, and perjured liars, and turned wrong side out by the lie-yers, and told our livers was white, and our hearts blacker than our skins. Marse Alfred, Bedney and me are scared of that court; what you call the law, cuts curous contarabims sometimes, and when the broad axe of jestice hits, there is no telling whar the chips will fly; it's wuss than hull-gull, or pitching heads and tails. You are a lie-yer, Marse Alfred, and you know how it is yourself; and I beg your pardon, sir, for ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... the sandal tree, imparting (while it falls) its aromatic flavor to the edge of the axe, and the benevolent man rewarding evil with good, would be witty, did it not ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... sweet enough within, we will not require the touch of the senses, nor Nature's masterstrokes to awaken us. We will not need to leave our rooms, for it is all here—in the deep gleam of polished strength of the hickory axe-handle, in the low light of the blade, in stone wall and oaken sill, in leather and brass and pottery, in the respiration of the burning wood, and veritably massed upon the sweeping distance from the window. It is because we are coarse ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... the inexperience of our carpenters and masons, not one of whom had even built a chimney. Everybody had fireplaces in pioneer days, in the days of the Kentucky rifle, the broad-axe and the tallow-dip; but as the era of frame houses came on, the arches had been walled up, and iron stoves of varying ugliness had taken their places. In all the country-side (outside of LaCrosse) there was not a hearthstone of the old-fashioned kind, ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... as "Bits of Ribbon," suggesting as just and wise the more profuse distribution of honours,—in particular recommending an Alfred or an Albert Order. Also, many of my Rifle ballads,—whereof, more anon. And "The Over-sharpened Axe"—applicable to modern Boardschool Educationals: and Colonel Jade's matrimonial tirades, all real life: and "The Grumbling Gimlet," a fable on Content, &c. &c. With plenty more notabilia—which those who have the book can turn ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... gaiters, soft slouch hat with green puggaree, and then, given a coat of black paint, he would pass well for some warrior chief doing a death dance in the smoke. He is boiling with passion, his left fist, clenched hard as the head of an axe, moves up and down, in and out, like the legs of a kicking mule midst a crowd of cart-horses. In his right he swings his Mauser carbine, and a man don't need to be a descendant of a race of prophets to know that something has gone gravely wrong with the lieutenant, otherwise he would not be making ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... quills; but I said that, if this were gold, it could be easily tested, first, by its malleability, and next by acids. I took a piece in my teeth, and the metallic lustre was perfect. I then called to the clerk, Baden, to bring an axe and hatchet from the backyard. When these were brought, I took the largest piece and beat it out flat, and beyond doubt it was metal, and a pure metal. Still, we attached little importance to the fact, for gold was known to exist at San Fernando, at the south, and yet was not considered ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... the interruption. "That's the value of the war," he went on. "It has burst up all the old conventions, and we've got to finish the destruction before we can build. It is the same with literature and religion, and society and politics. At them with the axe, say I. I have no use for priests and pedants. I've no use for upper classes and middle classes. There's only one class that matters, the plain man, the workers, ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... place of execution on Tower Hill with an air of undisturbed courage that was grave and composed. He said little there, only that he was sorry for the blood that was shed, but he had ever meant well to the nation. When he saw the axe he touched it and said it was not sharp enough. He gave the hangman but half the reward he intended, and said if he cut off his head cleverly, and not so butcherly as he did the Lord Russel's, his man would give ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... don't mean that," whispered back Josh encouragingly. "You mean get my little axe, and kill my gentleman as ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... gazing on the wide expanse of ocean, feasted on the rich and novel landscape. They rode alternately, through cleared lands, studded with rich farms, waving with luxuriant crops of wheat and rye; and again, through regions, where the axe had never resounded, but where eucalypti, and bastard box, and forest oak with its rough acorn, towered above beauteous wild flowers, whose forms and varieties were associated in the mind of the stranger, with some of the most precious and valued ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... to him, and there came a sound of angry voices from the other side of the door. An axe descended on it, and ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... also were accused And other eke that loued secretly And of her lady durst axe no mercy Lest that she wolde of hym haue despyte And so[m]e also that putten right grete wite Ou double louers that loue thinges newe Thurg[h] whos falsenes hyndred be the trewe And so[m] there were as hit is ofte ...
— The Temple of Glass • John Lydgate
... With the general consent, in the Constitution of 1787, the germs of freedom were planted, while at the same time, apparently as a matter of course, the flourishing tree of slavery was effectually girdled, and the axe was already laid at its root. Three very simple provisions effectually secured this momentous result. The provision for stopping the slave trade in 1808, and the antagonist clause for opening wide the gates of our country to the immigration of free white men, together with that which restricted ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... When the prefectoral axe of the Baron Haussmann hewed its way through the Faubourg St. Germain in order to create the boulevard to which this aristocratic centre has given its flame, the appropriation of private property for public purposes caused to disappear numerous ancient dwellings bearing armorial devices, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... of the Square opposite to that occupied by the Palace of Justice, were the creditably designed Government Buildings, including the Raadsaal, which was surmounted by a golden figure of Liberty bearing in her hand a battle-axe and flag. On the forefront of the building in bold lettering there was graven the favourite ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry
... about the harbour. "Scenery!" you exclaim, "why, what could you have more? Here is a lovely harbour flanked by bold hills to right and left; here are the ruined castles, witnesses of the great days when Troy sent ships to carry the English army to Agincourt; here axe grey houses huddled at the water's edge, hoary, battered walls and quay-doors coated with ooze and green weed. Such is Troy, and on the further shore quaint Penpoodle faces it, where a silver creek, dividing, runs up to Lanbeg; further up, the harbour melts into a river where the old ferry-boat ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the goddess gave Odysseus a large axe and a sharp adze, and led him to the heights of the island, where the largest trees grew. He went to work at once and cut down twenty trees, which he hewed into proper shape, and then tied them together with ropes which he himself made ...
— Odysseus, the Hero of Ithaca - Adapted from the Third Book of the Primary Schools of Athens, Greece • Homer
... royal palace of Whitehall. He beheld the poor victim of pride, and an evil education, and misused power, as he laid his head upon the block. He looked on, with a steadfast gaze, while a black-veiled executioner lifted the fatal axe, and smote off that anointed ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... major shouted, pointing. And on the instant, driving furiously with pick-axe, he ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... men-at-arms came at their backs, With halberd, bill, and battle-axe: They bore Lord Marmion's lance so strong, And led his sumpter mules along, And ambling palfrey, when at need Him listed ease his battle-steed. The last, and trustiest of the four, On high his forky pennon bore; Like swallow's ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... a beard, made the fashion by Henry VIII. at the same time that the head was "polled,"—a singularly ugly combination,—until he was in the Tower and grew that beard which he smilingly swept away from the path of the executioner's axe. "It," he said with astonishing self-possession, could be "accused of no treason." In 1527, however, no shadow of tragedy seemed possible unless the suspicion of it slept in More's own heart when he said to his son-in-law, in answer to some flattering congratulation on the King's favour, ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue
... under great obligations to his wife, who saved his life and delivered him from prison. Some person was repeating things to her disadvantage, but he interrupted them by saying, "She saved my head from the axe, and this prevents my having any right to reprove too strictly whatever she may choose to do; for this reason I shall not thank any person who speaks to me upon ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans
... boys, that Phoebe had the stranger all to herself, and thus entered to the full into that unfashionable but most heart-stirring of London sights, 'the Towers of Julius,' from the Traitors' Gate, where Elizabeth sat in her lion-like desolation, to her effigy in her glory upon Tilbury Heath—the axe that severed her mother's 'slender neck'—the pistol-crowned stick of her father—the dark cage where her favourite Raleigh was mewed—and the whole series of the relics of the disgraces and the glories of England's royal line—well fitted, indeed, to strike the imagination of one who had grown up ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... said, emphatically. "I left my axe just outside, and it looks so like rain that I went to fetch it in, but I saw nobody; no, not a soul. Methinks it will rain ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday
... Zeus? You sent for me, and here I am; with such an edge to my axe as would cleave ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... their housekeeping equipment. What a sense of power and prosperity it gave them as they made their selection—two canvas-cots and two pairs of blankets, a lamp and an oil-can and a tiny oil-stove, two water- buckets and an axe and a wash-basin, a camp-stool and a hammock and a box full of groceries! They got a team to carry all this, in addition to their lumber and their trunks. They stopped at a farm-house, and arranged to get their milk and eggs and bread and vegetables, and also to borrow a hammer and saw; and then ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... husband's behalf. She was a pillar of the church herself, and was woefully disturbed about the condition of Jim's soul. Indeed, it was said that half of the time it was Mandy's prayers and exhortations that drove Jim into the woods with his dog and his axe, or an old gun that he had come into possession of from one ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... then cried those barons bold, "in vain are mace and mail, We fall before the Norman axe, as corn before the hail." "And vainly," cried the pious monks, "by Mary's shrine we kneel, For prayers, like arrows, glance aside, against the Norman teel." The barons groaned, the shavelings wept, while near ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of yourself, as some of the Britishers have a-writin' about us and the provinces. Oh yes, it's a great advantage havin' minister with you. He'll fell the big stiff trees for you; and I'm the boy for the saplin's, I've got the eye and the stroke for them. They spring so confoundedly under the axe, does second growth and underwood, it's dangerous work, but I've got the sleight o' hand for that, and we'll make a ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... wild animals as possible. But, pray, could not one spend some weeks or years in the solitude of this vast wilderness with other employments than these,— employments perfectly sweet and innocent and ennobling? For one that comes with a pencil to sketch or sing, a thousand come with an axe or rifle. What a coarse and imperfect use Indians and hunters make of Nature! No wonder that their race is so soon exterminated. I already, and for weeks afterward, felt my nature the coarser for this part of my woodland experience, and was reminded that our life ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... the instruments and remember, Bannister. My reflexes are perfect. There's nothing wrong with me. I could split rails with an axe now, if I had an axe. An axe or a paddle. Harry, I'm not getting back down in one piece. Somehow, I know it. Don't you let them do it to anyone else unless there are manual controls from the ejection onwards. Don't do it. This isn't just nosing into the Slot, ...
— What Need of Man? • Harold Calin
... York in a sad plight. His wagon had broken down in the midst of a swamp. In the melee all his gold had rolled away through the bottom of the vehicle, and was irrecoverably lost; and Astor was seen emerging from the swamp covered with mud and carrying on his shoulder an axe,—the sole relic of his property. When at length, in 1794, Jay's treaty caused the evacuation of the western forts held by the British, his business so rapidly extended that he was enabled to devolve these laborious journeys upon others, while ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... gets to places where money is of little use. If I can get hold of a pistol anyhow I shall be glad. A pistol will always produce civility if one meets only one or two men. The other things I should want are a box of matches for making fires, a good knife, or better still, a small axe, for chopping wood, and a bottle or skin for ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... however, executed by the crew, with a sort of desperate submission to the will of their commander; and when the preparations were completed, the anchors and kedge were dropped to the bottom, and the instant that the Ariel tended to the wind, the axe was applied to the little that was left of her long, raking masts. The crash of the falling spars, as they came, in succession, across the decks of the vessel, appeared to produce no sensation amid that scene of complicated ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... more central neighbourhoods by Mr. Worthington G. Smith; and many axes, knives, etc., were discovered only a few years ago near Hitchin. Implements of the Neolithic Age are naturally more numerous and form in themselves an interesting study in the evolution of manual skill. Flint axe-heads, wonderfully polished, have been found at Albury, Abbot's Langley, Panshanger and Ware; chipped flints of more fragmentary character have been found near St. Albans and elsewhere; flint arrow-heads were discovered at Tring Grove nearly 170 ...
— Hertfordshire • Herbert W Tompkins
... see The Bravo of the Battle-Axe," Foker said, "Bingley's splendid in it; he wears red tights, and has to carry Mrs. B. over the Pine-bridge of the Cataract, only she's too heavy. It's great ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... is tantamount to saying that he believed each art to be strictly limited to certain modes of expression, which are only overstepped at the cost of coherency. In the appendix to his Laocooen, he quotes Plutarch as saying that one should not chop wood with a key, or open the door with an axe. He who should do so would not only be spoiling both those utensils, but would also be depriving himself of the utility of both. He believed that this applied ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... any one still feels any doubt regarding the efficacy of this method, it is enough to point to our English kings. Every king of England has at the back of his mind a vision of a flashing axe on a frosty January morning nearly four centuries ago. It has proved highly salutary in preserving them within the narrow path of Duty. Before Charles I. English monarchs were an almost perpetual source of trouble to their people; they have scarcely ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... enough, to spring upon a horse with as much armor upon them and in their hands as possible; to run races; to see how long they could continue to strike heavy blows in quick succession with a battle-axe or club, as if they were beating an enemy lying upon the ground, and trying to break his armor to pieces; to dance and throw summersets; to mount upon a horse behind another person by leaping from the ground, and assisting themselves only by one hand, and other similar ...
— Richard III - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... not, he lay down and slept in his wonted place. At daybreak he rose to his work and, girding his middle with a cord of palm- fibre, took hatchet and basket and walked down the length of the garden, till he came to a carob-tree and struck the axe into its roots. The blow rang and resounded; so he cleared away the soil from the place and discovered a trap-door and raised it.—And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased saying ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... appear to be very rich. Around all the encampments, and everywhere along the road, we saw the bare sites of what had evidently been tracts of hard-wood forest, indicated by the unsightly stumps of well-grown trees, not smoothly felled by regular axe-men, but hacked, haggled, and unevenly amputated, as by a sword or other miserable tool, in an unskilful hand. Fifty years will not repair this desolation. An army destroys everything before and around it, even to the very grass; for the sites of the encampments are converted into barren esplanades, ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... There are dark powers like lions ever in the path. Yes," he continued, turning round to the pinetrees, who were creaking slightly in the wind, "hate and oppression, greed, lust, and ambition! There you stand malevolently regarding me. Out upon you, dark witches of evil! If I had but an axe I would lay you lower than the dust." But the poor pine-trees paid no attention save to creak a little louder. And so incensed was Mr. Lavender by this insensibility on the part of those which his own words had made him perceive were the powers ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... their insistent presence, and danced about the cabin, cutting the empty air with an axe, and ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London
... is Monsieur de Vielmur's ancient title: dating from the vigorous days when every proper bishop, himself not averse to taking a breather with sword and battle-axe should fighting matters become serious, had his vice dominus to lead his forces in the field—is an old-school country gentleman who is amiably at odds with modern times. While tolerant of those who have yielded to the new order, he himself is a great stickler for the preservation ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... which are given in the thirteenth chapter.— 'The path is not far from man. When men try to pursue a course which is far from the common indications of consciousness, this course cannot be considered the path. In the Book of Poetry it is said— "In hewing an axe-handle, in hewing an axe-handle, The pattern is not far off." We grasp one axe-handle to hew the other, and yet if we look askance from the one to the other, we may consider them as apart. Therefore, the superior man governs men ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) Unicode Version • James Legge
... financial difficulties, and, failing to induce Daublaine, his partner, to advance him a relatively small sum, * * * Callinet became so bitterly incensed that one day, going to the organ on some trifling pretext, he entirely wrecked it with axe and handsaw. ...
— The Recent Revolution in Organ Building - Being an Account of Modern Developments • George Laing Miller
... grim is fed; Where'er fell Cruelty, at her command, With crimson banner marches through the land, And striding, like a giant, onward hies, Whilst man, a trodden worm, looks up, and dies; Where'er pale Murder in her train appears, With reeking axe, and garments wet with tears; 70 Or, lowering Jealousy, unmoved as Fate, Bars fast the prison-cage's iron gate Upon the buried sorrows and the cries Of him who there, lost and forgotten, lies;— ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... The tories and Indians were exasperated at the successful resistance of the garrison, and rushed up to the block-house. Five of them thrust the muzzles of their pieces through the loop-holes; but Mrs. Shell seized an axe, and, with well-directed blows, ruined every musket by bending the barrels. At the same time, Shell and his sons kept up a brisk fire, and drove the enemy off. About twilight, the old man went up stairs, and called out in a loud voice to his wife, that ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson
... the way, for he delighted in using the little camp axe which he often "toted" into the woods, when ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren
... appreciated, when we arrived at a wild descent about as bad as Disaster Falls, though more safely approached. This was called Triplet Falls by the first party. We went into camp at the head of it on the left bank. This day we found a number of fragments of the No-Name here and there, besides an axe and a vise abandoned by the first party, and a welcome addition to our library in a copy of Putnam's Magazine. This was the first magazine ever to penetrate to these extreme wilds. The river was from 300 to 400 feet wide, and the walls ran along with little ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... want an axe, for instance; nor a coffee-mill; nor a tin pail, nor an iron chain, nor a dipper; nor screws, nor tacks; nor a lamp, do you? nor ...
— Opportunities • Susan Warner
... contained way, furiously angry. I was impressed with the idea that the man was only a puppet in the hands of Fox and de Mersch, and that lot. And he gave himself these airs of enormous distance. I, at any rate, was clean-handed in the matter; I hadn't any axe to grind. ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... against his will, to die in peace. "I am ashamed," he said, "after so many battles, to die like a cow; case me in my armor, gird on my sword, put on my helmet, give me my shield and battle-axe, lift me to my feet, that I ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... mile away at the right other wood-cutters were at work. When the wind was the right way he could now and then hear the strokes of their axes and a shout. Often as he worked alone, swinging his axe steadily with his breath in a white cloud before his face, he amused himself miserably—as one might with a ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... formerly worn by the administrators of Sweden, before it became a kingdom under Gustavus Vasa. Before the throne were seated several grave, austere looking personages, in long black robes. Between the throne and the benches of the assembly was a block covered with black crape; an axe lay beside it. No one in the vast assembly appeared conscious of the presence of Charles and his companions. On their entrance they heard nothing but a confused murmur, in which they could distinguish no words. Then the most venerable of the judges in the black robes, he who seemed to be their ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... of addition for velocities in one direction according to the theory of relativity. The question now arises as to which of these two theorems is the better in accord with experience. On this point we axe enlightened by a most important experiment which the brilliant physicist Fizeau performed more than half a century ago, and which has been repeated since then by some of the best experimental physicists, so that there can be no doubt about its result. The experiment is concerned with the following ...
— Relativity: The Special and General Theory • Albert Einstein
... a sugar-bag across the rail with something heavy in the bottom of it, that nearly jerked Mary's arm out when she took it. It was a piece of beef, that looked as if it had been cut off with a wood-axe, but ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... up, you and I, a dear little one, bound to us very closely in innumerable ways; for seventeen years she will be the joy of her family, its 'white soul,' as Lamartine says, and suddenly she will become its scourge. When HE comes and takes her from us, his love from the very beginning is like an axe laid to the root of all the old affection in our darling's heart, and all the ties that bound her to her family are severed. But yesterday our little daughter thought of no one but her mother and father, as we had no thought that was not ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... be. But the pressure of the snow upon him was so great that he thought at first that it would break his ribs. When the motion had ceased, however, this pressure became less powerful; by the help of his ice-axe he managed to free himself, and knew that he was as yet unhurt, if ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... executioner said, "Thou dost not know who I am, I fancy? I strike bad people's heads off; and I hear that my axe rings!" ...
— A Christmas Greeting • Hans Christian Andersen
... immediately to chop away at the apron. As the water in the pond above had been drawn low by the morning's work, none overflowed the gate, so the men were enabled to work dry. Below the apron, of course, had been filled in with earth and stones. As soon as the axe-men had effected an entry to this deposit, other men with shovels and picks ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... whose eyes had gone in the general direction, recalled them, leaned back in his seat, and looked steadily at the man whose life was in his hand, as Mr. Attorney-General rose to spin the rope, grind the axe, and hammer the nails into ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... slumber, beneath the cool and starry sky. We made a fire against a log about eighteen inches thick; this was a limb from an adjacent blood-wood or red gum-tree, and this morning we discovered that it had been chopped off its parent stem either with an axe or tomahawk, and carried some forty or fifty yards from where it had originally fallen. This seemed very strange; in the first place for natives, so far out from civilisation as this, to have axes or tomahawks; and in the second place, to chop logs or boughs off a ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... villages are never any thing more than these general carpenters, and never acquire any regular knowledge of their business. The real Russian plotniki seldom carries any other tools with him than an axe and a chisel, and with these he wanders through all parts of the empire, seeking, ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... which no one sees, and which but seldom discovers itself; and this and that shift thither and hither, and the scales of the balance become even, and then ceases all distinction between 'mine' and 'thine,' and in the still forest rings an axe for me, and in the silent night my spirit thinks and my pen writes ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German (V.2) • Various
... is shown a Sclavonic horseman's battle-axe which has a handle of wood painted dark gray or light brown; the axe is of steel. The blade is cut from a piece of 1/4-in. wood with a keyhole saw. The round part is made thin and sharp on the edge. The thick hammer side of ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... out," replied Christopher, stopping beside him and picking up the axe which lay in a scattered pile of chips. "It's the spring weather, I reckon, but I'm not fit for a tougher ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... with my Lord Barkeley and his lady, where Sir G. Carteret, Sir W. Batten, and myself, with two gentlemen more; my Lady, and one of the ladies of honour to the Duchesse (no handsome woman, but a most excellent hand). A fine French dinner, and so we after dinner broke up and to Creed's new lodgings in Axe-yard, which I like very well and so with him to White Hall and walked up and down in the galleries with good discourse, and anon Mr. Coventry and Povy, sad for the loss of one of our number we sat down as a Committee for Tangier and did some business and so broke up, and ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... and look right along the cleft, and you'll soon learn how to cut wood," said the soldier. "In the meantime I'll show you how to use the axe." ...
— East of the Sun and West of the Moon - Old Tales from the North • Peter Christen Asbjornsen
... Ismenor could not have invented a more terrible fate had he tried for a hundred years. The hours passed wearily by for the poor princess, who longed for a wood-cutter's axe to put an end to her misery. How were they to be delivered from their doom? And even supposing that King Lino did fly that way, there were thousands of blue parrots in the forest, and how was she to know him, or he her? As to her mother—ah! that ...
— The Olive Fairy Book • Various
... Squire, everything was in apple-pie order on the glorious summer morning when he and his huntsmen made their way down river to the wood inhabited by Brock. A complete collection of tools—crowbar, earth-drill, shovels, picks, a woodman's axe, and a badger-tongs that had been used many years ago to unearth a badger in a distant county, and ever since had occupied a corner in the Squire's harness-room—had already been conveyed to the scene of operations, ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... not answer. He already held the axe in his hands and began to make a raft of bamboo, and Vasudeva helped him to tied the canes together with ropes of grass. Then they crossed over, drifted far off their course, pulled the raft upriver on ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse
... mysel' for a' the work the king could gi'e me. I'm a member o' the Union; and I think it's the only thing to do the workman any good. And I've been a turn-out, and known what it were to clem; so if I get a shilling, sixpence shall go to them if they axe it from me. Consequence is, I dunnot see where I'm ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... travellers pass so gaily on their way, I've heard the capercailzie's note at early dawning grey; But now, alas! my doom is sealed, I have not long to wait, For when the axe has laid me low the fire will be my fate. Farewell to sun, farewell to storm, to birds and travellers all, —Oh sad to think that one so great should ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... marches through the wilderness had stretched his limbs and broadened his back, and made a man of him in stature as well as in spirit. His jacket and cap were of wolfskin, and on his shoulder he carried an axe, with broad, shining blade. He was a mighty woodsman now, and could make a spray of chips fly around him as he hewed his way through ...
— The First Christmas Tree - A Story of the Forest • Henry Van Dyke
... in the year 1562, Gaston's tenth year, "when the work of devastation began, which was to strip from France that antique garniture of religious art which later ages have not been able to replace." Axe and hammer at the carved work sounded from one end of France ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... here we were starving and not the remotest prospect of supper. There was no use wasting unparliamentary language, so I began foraging in all directions, while H—— busied himself in cutting up wood to make a fire, a process not too easy with an uncommonly blunt axe. My researches into the interior of the dwelling were not encouraging; the fowl was not there, neither was the paprika. At length I discovered some eggs and a chunk of stale bread stowed away in a corner; there were a great many things in that corner, but "they ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... was in the rest of Europe, but not in England. The English bowman, or billman, who carried a large axe or bill, was a strong, healthy, well-fed man; and though he had not perfect freedom, according to our modern acceptation of the term, he had an existence worth struggling for, and not entirely at the command of an imperious lord. Hence he was sometimes not much inferior, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 461 - Volume 18, New Series, October 30, 1852 • Various
... they call me a rail-splitter, and you saw them carrying rails in the procession Saturday evening; well, it is true that I did split rails, and one day, while I was sharpening a wedge on a log, the axe glanced and nearly took my thumb off, and there is the scar, you see.' The right hand appeared swollen as compared with the left, on account of excessive hand-shaking the evening before; this difference is distinctly shown in the cast. That Sunday evening ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... anachronistically that here was the twentieth century interloping upon the fifteenth, articles which Norton had hidden here. In another corner were jumbled the things which the ancient people had left to mark their passing, an earthenware water-jar, half a dozen spear and arrow points of stone, a clumsy-looking axe still fitted to its handle of century-seasoned cedar, ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... well-equipped yards with crews of trained artisans. Hard by the huddled hamlet of log houses was the row of keel-blocks sloping to the tide. In winter weather too rough for fishing, when the little farms lay idle, this Yankee Jack-of-all-trades plied his axe and adze to shape the timbers, and it was a routine task to peg together a sloop, a ketch, or a brig, mere cockleshells, in which to fare forth to London, or Cadiz, or the Windward Islands—some of them not much larger and far less ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... vegetable kingdom had asserted its sovereignty. At his back loomed a dense forest, impenetrable to the foot of man, defying his puny hand armed with axe or saw. The trees were not high, few of them being above twenty feet, but from their branches creepers and parasites hung in tangled profusion, interlaced, joining tree to tree for acres, nay ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... would enter was the one where guiding clumps of sage formed an inviting lane across the traps. He selected an open spot instead and dismounted on a sheep pelt spread flat upon the ground; with a hand-axe he hewed out a triangular trap bed a foot across by three inches deep, placing every shred of fresh earth removed from it in a canvas sack; then he fitted a heavy Newhouse four in place with both springs bent far to the rear and ...
— The Yellow Horde • Hal G. Evarts
... makes furniture with an axe] 1. A person who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and how to stretch their capabilities, as opposed to most users, who prefer to learn only the minimum necessary. 2. One who programs enthusiastically (even obsessively) or who enjoys ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... among these Holston Virginians was that of the Campbells, who lived near Abingdon. They were frontier farmers, who chopped down the forest and tilled the soil with their own hands. They used the axe and guided the plow as skilfully as they handled their rifles; they were also mighty hunters, and accustomed from boyhood to Indian warfare. The children received the best schooling the back country could afford, for they were a book-loving race, fond of reading and study as well as of out-door sports. ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... mystics.[177] The words nakedness, darkness, nothingness, passivity, apathy, and the like, fill their pages. We shall find that this time-honoured phraseology was adhered to long after the grave moral dangers which beset this type of Mysticism had been recognised. Tauler, for instance, who lays the axe to the root of the tree by saying, "Christ never arrived at the emptiness of which these men talk," repeats the old jargon for pages together. German Mysticism really rested on another basis, and when Luther had the courage to break with ecclesiastical tradition, the via negativa rapidly disappeared ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... the bone: 'This is too tough for me, I guess I'll go 'roun'.' An' it did go 'roun'. You can see whar it come out of the flesh on the other side. Why, by the time Sam was fourteen years old we quit splittin' old boards with an axe or a hatchet. We jest let Sam set on a log an' we split 'em over his head. Everybody was suited. Sam could make himself pow'ful ...
— The Sword of Antietam • Joseph A. Altsheler
... to the tops of the trees, the view through the woods presented a perpetual tumult of crowding and fluttering multitudes of pigeons, their wings roaring like thunder, mingled with the frequent crash of falling timber, for now the axe-men were at work cutting down those trees which seemed to be most crowded with nests, and seemed to fell them in such a manner that, in their descent, they might bring down several others, by which means the falling of one large tree sometimes produced ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... calls himself a teacher of God's word, thinks that it is God's word that he preaches when he strains his lungs to fill his church. The question is this, Caroline;—would you have loved the same man had he come to you with a woodman's axe in his hand or a clerk's quill behind his ear? ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... bins and barrels gets low and spring approaches, the buried treasures in the garden are remembered. With spade and axe we go out and penetrate through the snow and frozen earth till the inner dressing of straw is laid bare. It is not quite as clear and bright as when we placed it there last fall, but the fruit beneath, which the hand soon exposes, is just as bright and far more luscious. ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... a-building, we are told that the stone was made ready at the quarry, "and there was neither hammer nor axe nor any tool of iron heard in the house." The structures of intellectual beliefs which Christians have reared in the various centuries to house their religious faith have been built, for the most part, out of materials they found already prepared by other ...
— Some Christian Convictions - A Practical Restatement in Terms of Present-Day Thinking • Henry Sloane Coffin
... Amalekites, and the Ammonites, and the neighboring warlike peoples, and compelled them to pay tribute. He was not more rapacious than France has recently shown herself to Siam, or than England to India, and he was emphatically the "battle-axe of God." It was enlightenment against savagery, the true religion against the idolatries and witchcrafts of a false worship. In every way David displayed statesmanship, not carrying on war for the mere pleasure of it, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... that Clissold had been acting as Ponting's 'model,' and that they had been climbing about the berg to get pictures. Ponting had lent his crampons and ice-axe to Clissold, but the latter nevertheless missed his footing after one of the 'poses,' and after sliding over a rounded surface of ice for some twelve feet, had dropped six feet on to a sharp angle in the wall of the berg. Unquestionably Clissold was badly hurt, and although neither Wilson ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... of the axe was heard in the rear of the cabins coming from a piece of woodland the captain had ordered cleared, with the double view of obtaining fuel, and of increasing his orchards. This little clearing was near a quarter of a mile from the flats, ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... the story to her neighbors, an exasperated peasant hewed her down with an axe, because she fed the wolves on her own offspring, selfishly saving by the sacrifice, her ...
— Half Hours in Bible Lands, Volume 2 - Patriarchs, Kings, and Kingdoms • Rev. P. C. Headley
... on Pelion, and shaped them with the axe, and Argus taught them to build a galley, the first long ship which ever sailed the seas. They pierced her for fifty oars, an oar for each hero of the crew, and pitched her with coal-black pitch, and painted ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... acorn was grown a large oak-tree. They built them a nest in the topmost bough, And young ones they had, and were jolly enow. But soon came a Woodman in leathern guise: His brow like a pent-house hung over his eyes. 25 He'd an axe in his hand, and he nothing spoke, But with many a hem! and a sturdy stroke, At last he brought down the poor Raven's own oak. His young ones were kill'd, for they could not depart, And his wife she did die of ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Yet for a War the Parliament would squeeze, And fix to the revenue such a sum Should Goodricke silence and make Paston dumb. ... Meantime through all the yards their orders were To lay the ships up, cease the keels begun. The timber rots, the useless axe does rust, The unpractised saw lies buried in the dust, The busy hammer sleeps, the ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... reached the trunks he saw something move around the further one, and drew back quickly. It was well that he did so, for the moving thing was a man armed with an axe which he had swung high and now tried to bring down relentlessly on ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys with Pershing's Troops - Dick Prescott at Grips with the Boche • H. Irving Hancock
... the real meaning of that command, "Let him deny himself and take up his cross." Self-denial is not cutting off an indulgence here and there, but laying the axe at the root of the tree of self, of which all indulgences are only greater or smaller branches. Self-righteousness and self-trust, self-seeking and self-pleasing, self-will, self-defence, self-glory—these are a few of the ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... from the floor,' said the Health Officer. The man, who informed us that his name was William McNamara, 'from Innis, in the County Clare, siventeen miles beyand Limerick,' readily complied, and taking an axe dug up a board without much trouble, as the boards were decayed, and right underneath we found the top of the brick drain, in a bad state of repair, the fecal matter oozing up with a rank stench. Every one stooped down to look at this proof of sanitary disregard, and while this entire party ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... and one finds in furniture of this period the reproduction of ancient Greek forms for chairs and couches; ladies' work tables are fashioned somewhat after the old drawings of sacrificial altars; and the classical tripod is a favourite support. The mountings represent antique Roman fasces with an axe in the centre; trophies of lances, surmounted by a Phrygian cap of liberty; winged figures, emblematical of freedom; and antique heads of helmeted warriors arranged ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield |
