"Boring" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... as Rose was well aware, found his conversation boring. But it always interested her. In fact Rose Otway was the one person in Witanbury who listened with real pleasure to what Jervis Blake had to say. Oddly enough, his talk almost always ran on military matters. Most soldiers—and ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... machine shop of the Midvale Steel Company, the writer began a systematic study of the laws involved in the first and second problems above referred to by devoting the entire time of a large vertical boring mill to this work, with special arrangements for varying the drive so as to obtain any desired speed. The needed uniformity of the metal was obtained by using large locomotive tires of known chemical composition, ...
— Shop Management • Frederick Winslow Taylor
... the hospital here. I live in the hope that some day I may write its history, and may be able to say something which will not be open to the charge of, "Oh! Another boring book about the War!" As I conceive it, my hospital book will be an analysis of the mind and character of the British working-man with his defensive armour off, and not an attempt to give any views on military or medical reform and ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... I looked out of the window and watched the vulgar blackbirds, with toes turned in, boring out their worms, I realized sharply that even they, as indeed everything large and small in the house and grounds, shared this strangeness, and were twisted out of normal appearance because of it. Life, as expressed in the entire place, was crumpled, ...
— The Damned • Algernon Blackwood
... mortars with the besiegers, except what the navy had in front of the city; but wooden ones were made by taking logs of the toughest wood that could be found, boring them out for six or twelve pound shells and binding them with strong iron bands. These answered as cochorns, and shells were successfully thrown from them into the ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... is described as lancinating, cutting, tearing, burning, boring and pressing. Patients use different words in describing the attacks, and there is probably a difference in the character of the pain, though in a severe paroxysm one is scarcely able to make a very nice distinction. We have known cases in which ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... pellmell far out upon the icy surface of the lake, and then on, bearing with them in the rout both Yellow Panther and Braxton Wyatt. Nor did they dare to look back, because they knew that the terrible eyes of the long departed, upon whose territory they had intended to commit sacrilege, were boring into their backs. The island was haunted, and would remain so for many a year, despite all that Braxton Wyatt and Yellow ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... various objects produced in the foundry. Johnie was a complete incarnation of technical knowledge. He was the Jack-of-all-trades of the establishment; and the standing counsel in every out-of-the-way case of managing and overcoming mechanical difficulties. He was the superintendent of the boring machines. In those days the boring of a steam-engine cylinder was considered high art in excelsis! Patterson's firm was celebrated for the ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... bloodsuckers only on the heads and bodies of sporting or Collie dogs, who had been boring for some time through coverts and thickets. They soon make themselves visible, as the body swells up with the blood they suck until they resemble small soft warts about as big as a pea. They belong to ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... robin boring for grubs in a country dooryard. It is a common enough sight to witness one seize an angle-worm and drag it from its burrow in the turf, but I am not sure that I ever before saw one drill for grubs and bring the big white morsel to the surface. ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... were in the box, but particularly to the wretched creature who was the occasion of it all. If he had known—if he could have conceived, beside whom he was sitting, and to whom the story was told!—I suffered with courage, like an Indian at the stake, while they are rending his fibres and boring his eyes, and while he smiles applause at each well-imagined contrivance of his torturers. It was too much for me at last, Jeanie—I fainted; and my agony was imputed partly to the heat of the place, and partly to my extreme ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... with a result to the good. I am trying especially to reflect our own life of the present, and to get into the heart of the pictures made by the past. To do this I do not consider any detail too small, so long as it is not boring. Nor any method wrong which I feel to be true. I am naturally not always believed in, and I do not always make myself clear. Sometimes I think I am misunderstood through laziness. To give one instance, of one or the other: in a recent play of mine, 'The Climbers', something which I ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: The Moth and the Flame • Clyde Fitch
... to be a civil kind of fellow; but, as to boring, I don't know—if you undertake it at your own expense. I dare say there may be minerals in the ground. Well, you may call at the castle to-morrow, and when my brother has done with the tenantry, I'll speak to ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... building up the framework of a house, assisted by an angel; Jesus is boring a hole with a large gimlet: an angel helps ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... insipid Casino, where people only gather for show, where they talk in whispers, where they dance stupidly, where they succeed in thoroughly boring one another, we sought some other way of passing our evenings pleasantly. Now, just guess what came into the head of one of our husbandry? Nothing less than to go and dance each night in one of ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... the most important thing for the camper is a good bed. It is even more important than good food because if we sleep well, hunger will furnish the sauce for our grub, but if we spend the night trying to dodge some root or rock that is boring into our back and that we hardly felt when we turned in but which grew to an enormous size in our imagination before morning, we will be half sick and soon get enough of being an Indian. A canvas cot makes the best camp bed if it can be taken along conveniently. There is one important ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... rapidly, until the drills were boring eight hundred feet below the surface, and it was hourly expected that bed-rock would be struck, when George broached to Ralph a matter he had had on his mind from the hour he first learned that "The Harnett" was ...
— Ralph Gurney's Oil Speculation • James Otis
... terrible, but, fortunately for them, they were lodged upon the water casks, over which was constructed a temporary deck. By boring holes in the planks they managed, by means of a proof glass, to obtain ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... an instrument of destruction, this might have produced a far more beneficial result under other circumstances. As it was now, few, if any, took heed of what they could not hear above that awful tumult, and those who felt the boring lead never rose up to give ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.
... which you speak of our home. It makes me happy to feel how fine and strong is the force of life which soon adjusts itself to each separation and uprooting. It makes me happy, too, to think that my letters find an echo in your heart. Sometimes I was afraid of boring you, because though our life is so fine in many ways, it is certainly very primitive, and there are not ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... also in consequence of the small amount of our planet's internal heat, the water has not undergone chemical change, and mostly lies at great depths; but, of course, well-boring is much easier work than on your world, and I expect our methods are rather in ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... to be the home of a young couple. They received the travellers as the patriarchs must have received the guest sent by God. They had to sleep on a corn husk mattress in an old moldy house. The woodwork, all eaten by worms, overrun with long boring-worms, seemed to emit sounds, to ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... concert of acclamations that echoed during the days of the fetes over the inauguration of the line, a less modest place might have been made for those who, with invincible tenacity and rare talent, directed the technical part of the work, and especially those 15 kilometers of colossal boring—the great St. Gothard Tunnel, which ranks in the history of great public works side by side with the piercing of the Frejus, and the marvelous digging of Suez ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 365, December 30, 1882 • Various
... she were a servant-girl. They didn't like it. Jim Rattenbury hated it, I know. She wasn't one of us and she wasn't one of them. A damned in-between, that's what she was. And Uncle Peter used to get drunk!... I'm awfully sorry, you chaps, I oughtn't to be boring you like this!" ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... perceive," said Aramis, smiling, "that we are greatly boring this good gentleman, my ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... thought. Annoyed to find the old man's eyes boring into him again, he cleared his throat ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... combination to the great vault in the corner, old Hector's breath came in short snorts. He turned and, still in the same attitude, watched Daney while the latter twirled and fumbled and twirled. Poor man! He knew The Laird's baleful glance was boring into his back and for the life of him he could not remember the combination he had used ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... lump here, just above my mouth? Well, that's not a mosquito-bite; that's my nose; but think of something about that size and you'll have some idea of what a mosquito-bite is like out there. But why am I boring you with my troubles? Tell me all about yourself. You've certainly been growing, whatever else you may have been doing while I've been away; I can hardly lift you. Has Steve ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... a vacation tends to get boring after a week or two anyhow. I've got no family ties I care to keep up, and few enough close friends. Most of us are like that; I imagine it's in the nature ...
— The Man Who Played to Lose • Laurence Mark Janifer
... could follow the trend. Ever since the scullery window was found open the year Shining Light was disqualified in the Cesarewitch for boring, Uncle Tom has had a marked complex about burglars. I can still recall my emotions when, paying my first visit after he had bars put on all the windows and attempting to thrust the head out in order to get a sniff of country air, I nearly ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... contracted the bad habit of running dry and for inconvenient periods remaining so. We were therefore compelled to carry all our water from a neighbor's spring at least a quarter of a mile away. We tried to remedy this defect by boring an artesian well, but all our attempts were unsuccessful. Country life was distasteful to cooks as they preferred to live in a city where they could make and mingle with friends, and I soon learned that if I wanted to keep a ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... of the boiler requiring the force of machinery. To effect this purpose, shafts carried by the central engine to which we have already alluded, are attached to the walls in various parts of the room, as seen in the engraving. Connected with these shafts are various drilling and boring machines, which can at any time be set in motion, or put to rest, by being thrown in or out of gear. One of these machines is seen on the right of the boiler above referred to, and another in the left-hand corner of the room quite in the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... white downy patches on the bark and twigs, the white pine weevil, a boring insect, and the white pine blister rust, a fungus, ...
— Studies of Trees • Jacob Joshua Levison
... asked. For threats can sometimes gain a request which soft-dealing cannot compass. Hadding was conquered by this man in an affair by land; but in the midst of his flight he came on his enemy's fleet, and made it unseaworthy by boring the sides; then he got a skiff and steered it out to sea. Toste thought he was slain, but though he sought long among the indiscriminate heaps of dead, could not find him, and came back to his fleet; when he saw from afar off a light boat tossing on the ocean billows. Putting out some vessels, ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... began to chuckle and Teddy had some difficulty in going on with his story. But it seemed they had been at the Derby place the evening before and Timothy had been "boring everybody to distraction," Ted said, reading "Excelsior" ...
— Betty Gordon at Mountain Camp • Alice B. Emerson
... his points. "You're not tired of me—though I see I'm boring you hideously; put up with it a little longer, I've nearly finished—and you'd shed quite a respectable number of tears if I were to die young. Yes, I am young though as ugly as Satan. I believe you think I'm some sort ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... of malice in what he said, nor, indeed, of any serious feeling at all. The legend about Napoleon and Mme. de Stael must, therefore, go into the waste-basket, except in so far as it is true that she succeeded in boring him. ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... boring into my back. I sense that the substance under us is malignant, inimical. I have the same feeling with every step I take, as though the unseen surface were endowed with arms capable of reaching out and ...
— Lords of the Stratosphere • Arthur J. Burks
... Mr. Dodd, and passed on up the street. But he felt the judge's gimlet eyes boring holes in his back. The judge's position was very fine, no doubt for the judge. All of which tends to show that Levi Dodd had swept his mind, and that it was ready now for the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... to carry loads, and they transport an elephant's tusk by boring a hole in the hollow end, through which they attach a rope; it is then dragged along the ground by a donkey. The ivory is thus seriously damaged . ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... to imagine it—I can remember: how we used to sit around the edges of the room behaving ourselves just as hard as ever we could, and boring one another to extinction. I'm afraid some of them do it yet, sometimes; but I won't ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... And directly they came together he began to talk with the kind intention of burying the awkwardness of failure under a heap of words. It looked as if the great assault threatened for that night were going to fizzle out. An inferior henchman of "that brute Cheeseman" was up boring mercilessly a very thin House with some shamelessly cooked statistics. He, Toodles, hoped he would bore them into a count out every minute. But then he might be only marking time to let that guzzling Cheeseman dine at his leisure. Anyway, the Chief could not be persuaded ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... her standing erect with her ankle-bones together and her foil arched over her head, the hilt in one hand and the button in the other—the old general opposite, bent forward, left hand reposing on his back, his foil advanced, slightly wiggling and squirming, his watching eye boring straight into hers—and all of a sudden she would give a spring forward, and back again; and there she was, with the foil arched over her head as before. La Hire had been hit, but all that the spectator saw of it was a something like ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... gets broader, and willow becomes common. We found specimens of a Planorbis in the mud of the stream, and saw apparently a boring shell in the alluvium, but could not land to examine it. Chalky masses of alligators' droppings, like coprolites, are very common, buried in the banks, which become twenty feet high at the junction with the Ganges, where ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... month, and the very church windows seem labouring with a fit perspiration. Horribly boring—isn't it? How your hat clings to your moistened forehead, and the warm gloves droop from your fingers, like roasting chicken! Get as much room as possible; tenderly pass little miss there, and her unbreeched brother, over to their smiling mamma. Now you have the balmy corner ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 266, July 28, 1827 • Various
... engaged in boring brass cannon in the arsenal at Munich, he was struck with the degree of heat which the brass gun acquired, and with the still more intense heat which the metallic chips, which were thrown off, possessed. Of the phenomena he says: "The more I meditated on these phenomena, the more they appeared ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... tolerate a reply, and boring Henry more and more towards the piano] You don't admire Mrs Bompas! You would never dream of writing poems to Mrs Bompas! My wife's not good enough for you, isn't she. [Fiercely] Who are you, pray, that you ...
— How He Lied to Her Husband • George Bernard Shaw
... remarkable value, mines of gold and silver, had been discovered twenty and thirty miles back in the mountains. Mining towns had sprung up along the steep and rocky banks. Mining methods had turned a limpid stream into a turbid torrent. Two railways had run their lines, hewing, blasting, boring, and tunnelling up the narrow valley, first to reach the mines and finally to merge in a "cut-off" to the great Transcontinental, so that now huge trains of Pullmans went straining slowly up-grade past the site of old Fort Reynolds, or came coasting ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... his experiment in boring for sympathy, he tried another, a dangerous one, it would seem, but very potent ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... boring a tunnel through a mountain," said Oscar, "and presently hearing the tapping of the ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... cord of white flax. M. Agoub (in Gauttier vol. vi. 344) shirks, as he is wont to do, the whole difficulty. [The idea seems to me to be, and I believe this is also the meaning of M. Houdas, that Haykar produced streaks of light in an otherwise dark room by boring holes in the back wall, and scattered the sand over them, so that, while passing through the rays of the sun, it assumed the appearance of ropes. Hence he says mockingly to Pharaoh, "Have these ropes ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... killed the cousin who pulled out his tail. I thrashed him, then and there, WITH the tail; which was such a silly thing to do; because, though it damaged the cousin, it also spoiled the tail. The next time—ah, but I am boring you!" ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... was charged with intensity. Plimsoll's dark eyes were boring through the dealer's ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... Mahometanism prevails, between the sixth and tenth year. The ceremony is called krat kulop and buang or lepas malu (casting away their shame), and a bimbang is usually given on the occasion; as well as at the ceremony of boring the ears and filing the teeth of their daughters (before described), which takes place at about the age of ten or twelve; and until this is performed they ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... honour of carrying out the project was reserved for France. Ferdinand de Lesseps, who succeeded in connecting the Mediterranean Sea with the Red Sea, was the man who, after the lapse of centuries, seriously interested his fellow-countrymen in boring the Isthmus ...
— The Makers of Canada: Champlain • N. E. Dionne
... Horieneke came upon her brothers playing in the sand. They had scooped it up in their wooden shoes and poured it into a heap in the middle of the road and then wetted it; and now they were boring all sorts of holes in it and tunnels and passages and making it into a rats'-castle. She let them be, gathered up her little skirts, so as not to dirty them, and passed by on ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... final touch was being given to our task—i.e. the hole-boring through the tail-fin—all hands lay around in various picturesque attitudes, enjoying a refreshing smoke, care forgetting. While thus pleasantly employed, sudden death, like a bolt from the blue, leapt into our midst in a terrible form. The skipper was labouring hard at his task ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... extra heart, he steadied down the rash, He rode great clumsy boring brutes, and chanced a fatal smash; He got the rushing Wymlet home that never jumped at all— But clambered over every fence and clouted every wall. But ah, you should have heard the cheers that shook the members' ...
— Saltbush Bill, J.P., and Other Verses • A. B. Paterson
... lion-like mane of her father's head and the ecstasy of his eyes and a voice in her but not of her whispered: "Well, I hope you're satisfied."... She was conscious of the heavy scent of flowers which reminded her of a funeral.... One face stood out distinct and seemed to be boring into her, reading secrets which, she felt through a great dizziness, she ought not to let him fathom. It was the face of Dr. Ebbett.... Then she heard a voice which sounded to her unduly loud saying: "I do," and realized that it was her own. Later she was reliably ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... into the subterrene cavities wherein the eruptive forces were generated—the plutonic laboratory of the rebellious agency. Of course previous to the adoption of this measure, the crust in the neighbourhood had been carefully explored and tested by various wonderfully elaborate and perfect boring instruments, and a map or rather model of the strata for a mile below the surface, and for a distance around the volcano which I dare not state on the faith of my recollection alone, had been constructed on a scale, as we should say, of twelve inches to the mile. ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... had no idea of boring anybody—you least of all—with my woes. Indeed, I haven't any sorrows now, because to-day I received my first encouragement; and no doubt I'll be a huge success. Only—I thought it best to make it clear why it would ...
— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers
... were internal plant-feeding larvae before there were galls: and, indeed, we have geological evidence that boring insects date very far back indeed. The primitive internal feeders, then, were miners in the roots, stems, twigs, or leaves, such as occur very commonly at the present day. These miners are excessively harmful to plant-life, ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... a year would elapse between the commencement of the work and its completion; but the interval would not be void of excitement. The place to be chosen for the boring, the casting the metal of the Columbiad, its perilous loading, all this was more than necessary to excite public curiosity. The projectile, once fired, would be out of sight in a few seconds; then what would become of it, how it would behave in space, how it would ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... Absolute silence was enjoined among the workers, and they were thus enabled to extend their excavations close to the surface without the defenders having an idea of their proximity. The distance that they were from the inner face was ascertained by boring through at night-time with spears. By the end of the third day the excavations had been carried so far that there was but a foot or so of earth remaining, this being kept from moving, on pressure from the outside, by a lining of boards supported by beams. Thus at twenty ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty
... aside; "that is, I am boring you, my friend." Then aloud, "Well, then, let us leave; I have no further business here, and if you are ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... motionless under the sway of a slight reaction. At the moment he did not want to work. He was continuously conscious of ribbons of red hot rails that streamed like fluted snakes from under the gigantic rolls, and they seemed to be boring their way into his brain. He had shipped thousands of tons to the railway company and there were thousands more to go. In a week or so he would get a formal acceptance of his product, and then— He stretched himself a little ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... for the nose appears to us perfectly unnecessary. The Peruvians, however, think otherwise; and they hang on it a weighty ring, the thickness of which is proportioned by the rank of their husbands. The custom of boring it, as our ladies do their ears, is very common in several nations. Through the perforation are hung various materials; such as green crystal, gold, stones, a single and sometimes a great number of gold rings.[65] This is rather troublesome to ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... me by putting her hand between our bellies to prevent my penetrating too far. It was not the stretching, nor the plugging, it was the boring too deeply which hurt the ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... adorning his person. He doesn't want it. He's such a splendid looking chap to begin with. But I'm sure his duties have a poor time! Why, he told me—me, an utter stranger!—as we went downstairs—that being a landowner was the most boring trade in the world. He hated his tenants, and turned all the bother of them over to his agents. "But they don't hate me"—he said—"because I don't put the screw on. I'm rich enough without." By Jove, he's a ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... has been reckoned to be of many different thicknesses. One man will say it is ten miles thick, and another will rate it at four hundred miles. So far as regards man's knowledge of it, gained from mining, from boring, from examination of rocks, and from reasoning out all that may be learned from these observations, we shall allow an ample margin if we count the field of geology to extend some twenty miles downwards from the highest mountain-tops. Beyond this we find ourselves in a land of ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... objectionable. Bores are more frequently clever than dull, and the only all-round definition of a bore is—The Person We Don't Want. Few people are bores at all times and places, and indeed one might venture on the charitable axiom: that when people bore us we are pretty sure to be boring them at the same time. The bore, to attempt a further definition, is simply a fellow human being out of his element. It is said by travellers from distant lands that fishes will not live out of water. It is a no less familiar fact that certain dull metals ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... tested to determine methods of drying, compressing into briquettes, and utilization for power production in the gas producer. In connection with these peat investigations, a reconnoissance survey has been made of the peat deposits of the Atlantic Coast. Samples have been obtained by boring to different depths in many widely distributed peat-bogs, and these samples have been analyzed and tested in order to determine their ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXX, Dec. 1910 • Herbert M. Wilson
... delights in showing a callous disregard of all that forms the basis of a civilized society? The only guarantees that we can take are that she has no ships of war, and that her army is only sufficient to police her frontier. The building of a war vessel or the boring of a gun must be regarded as a casus belli. Then, and then only, shall Europe be safe from the madness ...
— A Surgeon in Belgium • Henry Sessions Souttar
... through the fog, brought me up broad awake. I was falling almost vertically, in a sort of half vrille. No machine but a Spad could have stood the strain. The Huns were following me and were not far away, judging by the sound of their guns. I fully expected to feel another bullet or two boring its way through. One did cut the skin of my right leg, although I didn't know this until I reached the hospital. Perhaps it was well that I did fall out of control, for the firing soon stopped, the Germans thinking, and with reason, that they had bagged ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... a blood blister under the nail is secured by boring a small hole through the nail with the sharp point of a sterilized penknife (page 38). This simple bit of surgery not only relieves the pain, but is frequently the only means of saving the nail. Ingrown ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.
... enough, anyhow," his vis-a-vis answered. "Add up the dern total, will you, there's a good fellow. I must be getting home. There's that boring parade to-morrow at five again, and I've got a headache that will last me a week, thanks to Nappy's bad champagne. Well, what's ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... that Mr Robertson of Brighton claims priority of discovery touching the boring power of Pholades. His statements are founded on daily observation of the creatures at work for three months. 'The Pholas dactylus' he says, 'makes its hole by grating the chalk with its rasp-like valves, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 430 - Volume 17, New Series, March 27, 1852 • Various
... picture is a photograph of the same English walnut taken about six or seven days later, showing the young maggots that have just hatched out. What they will do, they will begin boring in, and they will just radiate out in all directions into the shuck. When they have gotten that far along, of course, there ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various
... double; then the strain is far more than doubled. Suppose, finally, the road be not a quarter mile but a mile, and not on level but through swamps, over rocks, logs, and roots, and the weather not cool, but suffocating summer weather in the woods, with mosquitoes boring into every exposed part, while both hands are occupied, steadying the burden or holding on to branches for help up steep places—and then he will have some idea of the horror of the portage; and there were many of these, each ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... men, do wear their hair long hanging down behind: but when they do any work or travail hard, it annoying them, they tie it up behind. Heretofore generally they bored holes in their ears and hung weights in them to make them grow long, like the Malabars, but this King not boring his, that fashion is almost left off. The men for ornament do wear Brass, Copper, Silver Rings on their Fingers, and some of the greatest Gold. But none may ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... but a moment when I was seized by a nightmare. I dreamed some monstrous form was bending over me, cursing, breathing flames out of its mouth, and boring a hot, sharpened implement into the centre of my forehead. I woke, to find, that, in part, my ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... mighty quick! "I'll write him to-morrow, if I've time," she had said. At the moment, the sense of achievement had exhilarated her; yet now, as she sat there on the heap of scrap, bending a pliant boring between her fingers, her pillar of fire roaring overhead from the chimneys of the furnaces, the achievement seemed flat enough. Why should she, to build a hospital for another woman's son, have worked so hard that she had never had time to notice the things her own son called "pretty"? Not his ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... For one, I could just keep you doped. Three days in dope won't hurt you, and you'll certainly be no problem then. Another way—I'll let you stay awake, but we stay in our rooms. I can lock you in at night, and that window is escape-proof. I checked. It would be sort of boring, but we can have tapes and stuff brought up. I'd have the guns put away and I'd watch you like a hawk every minute ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... and then stretched his hand toward the hat that lay near. "I'm going to send Angus to find a little sailing-boat for us to go out in; one that I can manage, with you at the tiller. It's uncommonly pleasant these fine evenings—the least boring of anything ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... say: Master is away in Jericho. But when Nicodemus called a few weeks afterwards Joseph was constrained to tell his foreman to tell Nicodemus that he would see him. The truth was, Joseph was glad of an interruption, for his business was boring him more than it did usually, but he liked to pretend to himself that he could not escape ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... didn't come, after all," she said. "It was rather boring waiting there all alone; but perhaps Sir Archie will kindly fall down again for my special benefit," and she laughed with the innocent, ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... There are four trees over 300 feet in height, and 40 to 61 feet in circumference. The tree which was cut down occupied five men twenty-two days, which would be at the rate of one man 110 days, or nearly four months' work, not counting Sundays. Pump augers were used for boring through the giant. After the trunk was severed from the stump it required five men with immense wedges for three days to topple it over. The bark was eighteen inches thick. The tree would have yielded more than 1,000 cords of four-foot wood and 100 cords ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... sash fillister, the common rebating plane, the side rebating plane. Grooving planes are the plough and dado grooving planes. Moulding planes are sinking snipebills, side snipebills, beads, hollows and rounds, ovolos and ogees. Boring tools are: gimlets, bradawls, stock, and bits. Instruments for dividing the wood, are principally the ripping saw, the half ripper, the hand saw, the panel saw, the tenon saw, the carcase saw, the sash saw, the compass saw, the keyhole saw, and turning saw. ...
— Woodworking Tools 1600-1900 • Peter C. Welsh
... was, as we have said, about or somewhat under the middle size. In his gait he was very ungainly. When walking, he drove forward as if his head was butting or boring its way through a palpable atmosphere, keeping his person, from the waist up, so far in advance that the a posteriori portion seemed as if it had been detached from the other, and was engaged in a ceaseless but ineffectual struggle to regain its position; ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... some intimation of the kind of trouble we are likely to get into," Elmer suggested, as they passed along. "I don't like this idea of boring a hole in the darkness with a little bit of a light and anticipating ...
— The Call of the Beaver Patrol - or, A Break in the Glacier • V. T. Sherman
... Italian guns. At close quarters these flashes were blindingly bright, and flung up showers of red sparks. In the intervals of a few seconds between flashes, if one stood with one's eyes fixed on the guns, the stars seemed blotted out in an utterly black darkness. A long bombardment is one of the most boring things in the world by reason of its intense monotony, and because in a queer half-unconscious way it begins, after many hours, very slightly to fray the nerves. Listening and watching in the small hours, and from time ...
— With British Guns in Italy - A Tribute to Italian Achievement • Hugh Dalton
... from the other room, in her mother's voice. "Come in here and save us old people from boring ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... frowns and dives inside. Hissing softly, "162" comes to rest as level as a rule. From her North Atlantic Winter nose-cap (worn bright as diamond with boring through uncounted leagues of hail, snow, and ice) to the inset of her three built-out propeller-shafts is some two hundred and forty feet. Her extreme diameter, carried well forward, is thirty-seven. Contrast this with the nine ...
— With The Night Mail - A Story of 2000 A.D. (Together with extracts from the - comtemporary magazine in which it appeared) • Rudyard Kipling
... Alleghany, the latter a much clearer river. In the stage met with an intelligent young man on his way to Erie, so concluded to stop at the same hotel. Paid to Wasson (?) half way to Erie 3 dollars. Walked to some iron works and saw them make rails very quickly, also some cannon boring. Walked across the aqueduct 400 yards long, cost 112,000 dollars. Called at the Post Office, but ...
— A Journey to America in 1834 • Robert Heywood
... energetic. It belied their colouring, which was dun and which, though of the same family, is distinct from mousey. It has infinitely more vim and a vast endurance and a great patience; also is it sullen and boring, but reliable. ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... steadily making up-stream. He watched the slow progress of the line; and then, to his horror, he perceived that the fish was heading for the other side of a large gray rock that stood in mid-channel. If he should persist in boring his way up that farther current, would not he inevitably cut the line on the rock? What could she do? Still nearer and nearer to the big boulder went that white line, steadily cutting through the brown water; and still ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... ten years ago a serious accident, which threatened the destruction of the mine, occurred. While boring, to obtain some potash salts, through an aquiferous stratum, a spring was tapped, which poured an immense quantity of water into the lower galleries. The inhabitants feared not only the ruin of the mine, but the falling ...
— The Mines and its Wonders • W.H.G. Kingston
... Blake replied unguardedly, for he did not see where his uncle's remark led. "Boring plant is expensive, and transport costs something. Then you have to spend a good deal beforehand if you wish to ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... fact which controlled his destiny. He had spent many, many hours with the Dona Dolores, talking, talking, as he loved to talk, and only saving himself from the betise of boring her by the fact that his enthusiasm had in it so fresh a quality, and because he was so like her Gonzales that she could always endure him. Besides, quick of intelligence as she was, she was by nature more ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the day after landing at Westover, Arnold entered Richmond, where he halted with about five hundred men. The residue, amounting to about four hundred, including thirty horse, proceeded under Lieutenant Colonel Simcoe to Westham, where they burnt a valuable foundry, boring mill, powder magazine, and other smaller buildings, with military stores to a considerable amount, and many valuable papers belonging to the government, which had been carried thither as to a ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 3 (of 5) • John Marshall
... once. "You are my first friend, you know," he said in his ordinary manner. "I should not think of settling near you unless I were sure of not boring you. But I believe we have tastes in common, and I hope you will let me come ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... were willing to stand by me, I made preparations for defence by boring loopholes for muskets into the stout clay walls of my tembe. They were made so quickly, and seemed so admirably adapted for the efficient defence of the tembe, that my men got quite brave, and Wangwana refugees with guns in their hands, driven out of Tabora, ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... the birds do, And shall get your scanty food By boring, and boring, and boring, All day in the ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... work," rejoined Cole. "I won't attempt to offer suggestions. Nearly every insurance broker in Boston has at one time or another had a go at John M. Hurd. Boring him to death has been unsuccessfully tried several times, but as you are in the family, you may of course have superior facilities to any of your predecessors. Blackmail might accomplish something. But really ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... are the basket weavers, but in some towns, especially of Ilocos Norte, the women are skilled in this industry (Plate LXVII). The materials used are rattan, which may be gathered at any time, or bamboo, which is cut only during the dry season and under the waning moon. It is firmly believed that boring insects will not injure bamboo cut at this time, and it is known that the dry period stalks are ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole
... were bound to come too, and I should have died of laughing to see those old liars bumping along and running foul of one another if I hadn't been too busy. I had the claimants one on each side of me, and by judiciously boring either quad. when it seemed inclined to draw ahead, I kept 'em fairly level. When they had had as much as I thought good for them, I pulled up, and several old codgers went over their nags' heads, of course. But all I said ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... answered Lord Henry, taking a cigarette from his case, and producing a gold-latten matchbox, "the only way a woman can ever reform a man is by boring him so completely that he loses all possible interest in life. If you had married this girl you would have been wretched. Of course you would have treated her kindly. One can always be kind to people about whom one cares nothing. ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... up here, isn't it, after being under double awnings for so long? But the Persian Gulf was getting rather boring ... were you ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... subterranean outlet without having duly weighed the probabilities in the scale with his elaborate observations: the idea gathers force when we remember that in the case of limestone cliffs, water so often succeeds in breaking bounds by boring through the solid rock. No more interesting problem is left to solve, and we shall yet learn whether, through the caverns of Western Kabogo, this Lake adds its waters to the vast northerly flow of rivers we now read of for the first time, and which are undoubtedly ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... and History and Geography are no earthly good here, and I know more Arithmetic as it is than I shall ever want now I'm a Princess. Princess Flachspinnenlos promised to show me how to work a spinning-wheel some day, but she's not very good at it herself, and anyhow, I'm sure it will be frightfully boring. Still, I'd rather give up the Gnomes than lose you, ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... rector's, hardly even with what could be called thought, but with something that must either soon cause the keenest thought, or at length a spiritual callosity: somewhere in her was a motion, a something turned and twisted, ceased and began again, boring like an auger; or was it a creature that tried to sleep, but ever and anon started awake, and with fretful claws pulled at its nest in the ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... its own inspiration, if it ceases to prolong its boring directly it recognizes that the outer coating, auscultated from time to time, is sufficiently thin, what will it do under the conditions of the present test? Feeling itself at the requisite distance from the surface, it will stop ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent
... Lady Ventnor and Sir Hill Birch and saw everybody there was to be seen. I nevah make a single note; my memory's marvellous. Left the Park at twelve and took a taxi to inquire after Lord Harrogate, Charlie Sievewright, and old Lady Dorcas Newnham. I'm not boring you? ...
— The Big Drum - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero
... known what real hunger meant, fell back on stale honey, three years old, scraped out of deserted rock-hives—honey black as a sloe, and dusty with dried sugar. He hunted, too, for deep-boring grubs under the bark of the trees, and robbed the wasps of their new broods. All the game in the jungle was no more than skin and bone, and Bagheera could kill thrice in a night, and hardly get a full meal. But the want of water was the worst, for though the Jungle ...
— The Second Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... of land for many years without knowing its value. He may think of it as merely a pasture. But one day he discovers evidences of coal and finds a rich vein beneath his land. While mining and prospecting for coal he discovers deposits of granite. In boring for water he strikes oil. Later he discovers a vein of copper ore, and after that silver and gold. These things were there all the time—even when he thought of his land merely as a pasture. But they have a value only when they are discovered ...
— The Trained Memory • Warren Hilton
... To get some things. He will come right to the desk. Please send him up at once. It is very important. (JARVIS takes out knife and begins boring hole in trunk from inside out. This hole should be already cut and covered with a label.) What ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Melodramatic Farce in Four Acts • Paul Dickey
... strong and massive bats or stanchions of iron. These bats, for the fixture of the principal and diagonal beams and bracing chains, required fifty-four holes, each measuring two inches in diameter and eighteen inches in depth. There had already been so considerable a progress made in boring and excavating the holes that the writer's hopes of getting the beacon erected this year began to be more and more confirmed, although it was now advancing towards what was considered the latter end of the ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... letters what befell at the beginning of his changes, will show what attended them to the close. His earliest difficulty was very grave. There was only one spring of water for gentlefolk and villagers, and from some of the houses or cottages it was two miles away. "We are still" (6th of July) "boring for water here, at the rate of two pounds per day for wages. The men seem to like it very much, and to be perfectly comfortable." Another of his earliest experiences (5th of September) was thus expressed: "Hop-picking is going on, and people sleep in the ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... linen, cold water and hot water, brandy and milk, all the insignia of the valley of the shadow did she put to hand, and con over and adjust and think upon, and then there was the waiting. She waited on the stoep, burning and tortured, boring at the horizon with dry eyes, and praying and hoping. A lifetime went in those hours, and the sun was slanting down before the road yielded, far and far away, a speck that grew into a cart going slowly. By and by she was able ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... forms presented by the smaller ivory vases are also to be found in vases made of those refractory stones. Further, the vases made of stone present not merely such forms as might be made by turning or boring, but there are also bowls with ribs which are as finely polished as the turned bowls. The hardest material used in the objects already found is rock crystal, of which several small flasks and bowls and a little lion are composed. But the lion, it must be confessed, is rather rudely ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1178, June 25, 1898 • Various
... station themselves on the top of a hill, whence a wide view is obtainable, and trust to the hounds coming back after running a ring. Given the right sort of horse, however—short-backed, thoroughbred if possible, and with good enough manners to descend a steep place without boring and tearing his rider's arms almost out of their sockets—many a fine run may be seen in this wild district. Much of the arable land has gone back to grass, so that it is quite a fair scenting country; and the foxes are stronger and more straight-necked than in more civilised ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... separately determined. It often happens that available energy is not in a form in which it can be applied directly to our needs. The water flowing down from the mountains in the neighborhood of the Alpine tunnels was competent to provide the power necessary for boring through them, but it was not in a form in which it could be directly applied. The kinetic energy of the water had first to be changed into the potential energy of air under pressure, then, in that form, by suitable mechanism, it was used with signal success to disintegrate and excavate ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 441, June 14, 1884. • Various
... slept for about two hours, while the reader has been receiving information second-hand about their past and future, when a scratching, scraping, boring noise on the outside of their bark roof temporarily disturbed their slumbers. Dol called out noisily, and, as was the way of that youngster on sundry occasions, talked some gibberish in his sleep. The ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... Aubrey; her own individual tastes were simple, and apart from the expensive equipment that was indispensable for their hunting trips, and which was Aubrey's choosing, not hers, she was not extravagant. The long list of figures that had been so boring during the tedious hours that she had spent with the lawyer, grudging every second of the glorious September morning that she had had to waste in the library when she was longing to be out of doors, had conveyed nothing to her ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... little memorandum of "pressing engagements." "A pretty fair book of events. First, old Johnstone's dinner—more of the boring process—then to welcome my strange employer, and, after that, Mademoiselle Justine! Later, I'll have my own little innings with General Willoughby, and, finally play the gracious host while Ram Lal watches Madame Louison's cat-like play upon her victim. Money ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... observes how much he was astonished at their laughing at what seemed to him the most ordinary occurrences. This was owing to their utter ignorance of matters commonly known to us. He tells us one day when the sailors were boring a hole to put a vent peg into a cask, the fermentation caused the porter to spirt out upon them. One of them tried in vain to stop it with his hand, but it flew through his fingers. Meanwhile a native who stood by burst ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... westward street the distant roar of voices mingled with the swing and rhythm and crash of martial music. Dock policemen and soldiers on guard began boring a wide lane through the throng of people on the pier. A huge black transport ship lay moored along the opposite side to that on which the guns and troopers were embarked, and for hours bales, boxes and barrels had been swallowed up and stored ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... the saddle and held on to the side of the machine with one hand, his alcohol-varnished eyes boring into Sandy's with the fixity ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... they happen to miss the deer on their passage through the country in autumn, they experience the most grievous inconvenience, and often privations, the succeeding winter; as they must then draw their living from the lakes, with unremitting toil,—boring the ice, which is sometimes from eight to nine feet thick, for the purpose of setting their hooks, and perhaps not taking a single fish after a day's hard work. Nevertheless, they must still continue their exertions till they succeed, shifting their hooks from ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean
... happened to be in the club. It occurred to me that poor Nevill was diabetic, and that Charley Crossman had been boring everybody about his gout. I buttonholed them both, and laid my unfortunate predicament before them. I said I'd pay all the expenses. In fact, the more they could make it cost ...
— The Motormaniacs • Lloyd Osbourne
... fragmentary, incoherent, chaotic even, but vivid as reality. He was at the bottom of a coal-mine in one of those long, narrow galleries, or rather worm-holes, in which human beings pass a large part of their lives, like so many larvae boring their way into the beams and rafters of some old building. How close the air was in the stifling passage through which he was crawling! The scene changed, and he was climbing a slippery sheet of ice with desperate effort, his foot on the floor of ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... to call them friends, or to know what friends meant. Andrews had taught her, by means of a system of her own, to know better than to cry or to make any protesting noise when she was left alone in her ugly small nursery. Andrews' idea of her duties did not involve boring herself to death by sitting in a room on the top floor when livelier entertainment awaited her in the basement where the cook was a woman of wide experience, the housemaid a young person who had lived in gay country houses, and the footman at once a young man of spirit ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... be mysterious, but I don't quite know how to tell you about Mr. Taggett. He has been working underground in this matter of poor Shackford's death,—boring in the dark like a mole,—and thinks he ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... work; but don't you think they overdo it? They work so much more than they need—they make so much more than they can eat—they are so incessantly boring and buzzing at their one idea till Death comes upon them—that don't you think they overdo it? And are human labourers to have no holidays, because of the bees? And am I never to have change of air, because the bees don't? Mr Boffin, I think honey excellent at breakfast; but, ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... symptoms are apt to be overshadowed by those of the general disease from which the patient suffers. At first the gland is swollen, hard, and tender, and the seat of constant, dull, boring pain; later there is redness, oedema, and fluctuation. The movements of the jaw are restricted and painful, the patient is unable to open the mouth, and has difficulty in swallowing. The inflammation reaches its height on the third or fourth day, and usually ends in suppuration. The pus is ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... the first finger of each hand stuck up alongside the head, like ears pricking. But it was a sign easily read. All the signs were sensible and initiative. When the "future" was meant, the finger was thrust ahead with a screwing motion, as if boring; when the "past" was meant, the hand and finger were extended in front and drawn back with the screwing motion. When he was full of food the Indian drew his thumb and finger along his body from his stomach to his throat. When he was ...
— Pluck on the Long Trail - Boy Scouts in the Rockies • Edwin L. Sabin
... two with my favorite, I made my way across the valley, boring and wallowing through the drifts, to learn as definitely as possible how the other birds were spending their time. The Yosemite birds are easily found during the winter because all of them excepting the Ouzel are restricted ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... (panna), and, considering the excellence of a great number which they possessed previous to our intercourse with them, the work they do is remarkably coarse and clumsy. Their very manner of holding and handling a knife is the most awkward that can be imagined. For the purpose of boring holes they have a drill and bow so exactly like our own that they need no further description, except that the end of the drill-handle, which our artists place against their breast, is rested by these people against a piece of wood or bone held in ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... the pirates had wounded, and severely beaten Monsieur de Fontanges, who had resisted the "enlevement" of his wife; and, after having cut away all the standing rigging, and nearly chopped through the masts with axes, they had finished their work by boring holes in the counter of the vessel; so that, had not Newton been able to come up with her, they must all have perished during ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... terzets, quartets, Nay, long quintets most dire to hear; Ay, and old motets and canzonets And glees in sets kept boring his ear. ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... expected to yield oil, if properly sought. An engine-house and derrick are next put up, the latter of timber in the modern wells, but in the older ones simply of slender saplings, sometimes still rooted in the earth. A steam-engine is next set up, and the boring commences. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... than the knife of bronze or iron, simply because it was ancient; just as to-day, in India, Brahman priests kindle the sacred fire not with matches or flint and steel, but by a process found in the earliest, lowest stages of human culture—by violently boring a pointed stick into another piece of wood until a spark comes; and just as to-day, in Europe and America, the architecture of the Middle Ages survives as a special religious form in the erection of our most recent churches, and to such an extent that thousands on thousands of ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... across a friend, an engineer who was on the job with me up in the hills a few months ago. He is also an American, a chap from Providence, Rhode Island. Connected with the consular service now. He was with a small party of Americans,—am I boring you?" ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... his kinsmen, the Golden-Wing prefers the fields and the borders of the forest to the deeper seclusion of the woods,—and hence, contrary to the habit of his tribe, obtains most of his subsistence from the ground, boring for ants and crickets. He is not quite satisfied with being a Woodpecker. He courts the society of the Robin and the Finches, abandons the trees for the meadow, and feeds eagerly upon berries and grain. What may be the final upshot of this course of living ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... at Greenwich. Not only this, but at midnight these four wonderful men, thanks to Athos, who spoke excellent English, were also at work at the scaffold—having bribed the carpenter in charge to let them assist—and at the same time boring a hole in the wall. The scaffold, which had two lower stories, and was covered with black serge, was at the height of twenty feet, on a level with the window in the king's room; and the hole communicated with a narrow ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... do come, if you possibly can," supplemented Mr. Dollond, coming forward in burlesque obedience. "We are boring each other horribly—I can answer for myself—and it would be an ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... the throttle and, with motor idling, swept down toward the endless miles of moonlit waste. Wind? They had been boring into it. Through the opened window he spotted a likely stretch of ground. Setting down the ship on a nice piece of Arizona desert was a mere ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... Misrule and arch-spirit of jollity. Pepys was shocked—or affected to be—one day by seeing all the great and fair ones of the Court squatting on the floor in the Whitehall gallery playing at "I love my love with an A because he is Amorous"; "I hate him with a B because he is Boring," and so on; and no doubt rocking with glee at some sally of wit, for, Pepys says, "some ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... for some moments, suddenly ceased. Tad's eyes were fairly boring into the shadows. All at once the particular shadow at which ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Montana • Frank Gee Patchin
... after all," interrupted Stagman; "we pass right through the centre of it by a tunnel in two minutes, so that you need never know there was a hill there. The strata are all clay and sandstone, exceeding well fitted for boring." ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... paint. The men of some races wear a kind of shirt without sleeves, and the women a petticoat reaching from the waist to the knees. These garments are made of cotton obtained from the uncultivated tree Bombax, and their color is white, blue, or red. The custom of boring the ears, the nose, and the under lip, for the insertion of some ornament, is much practised, particularly by the Panos, Shipeos, and Pirras. They paint their bodies, but not exactly in the tattoo manner; they confine themselves to single stripes. The Sensis women draw two stripes ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... absence of articulation. Every aspect of the phenomenon had been freely discussed there and endless ingenuity lavished on the question of how exactly it was that so much of what the world would in another case have called complete stupidity could be kept by a mere wonderful face from boring one to death. It was Mrs. Brook who, in this relation as in many others, had arrived at the supreme expression of the law, had thrown off, happily enough, to whomever it might have concerned: "My dear thing, it all comes back, as everything always does, simply ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... stores and offices, introducing him to the common people. At such times John Markley was the soul of cordiality; he seemed hungry for a kind look and a pleasant word with his old friends. About this time his defiant eyes began to lose their boring points, and to wander and hunt for something they had lost. When we had a State convention of the dominant party, the Markleys saw to it that the Governor and all the important people attending, with their wives, stopped in the big house. ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... are only too many of that kind in the world," replied the girl, with a faint smile in which there was no trace of mirth. "You see I've never had the least bit of business training and I suppose I would be easy prey. But I'm afraid I'm boring you with my troubles," she added, catching herself ...
— The Radio Boys' First Wireless - Or Winning the Ferberton Prize • Allen Chapman
... found that the blade would go through anything, sometimes so easily as to scarcely seem to cut, leaving no trace of a mark, it was so keen. At other times when he pressed on it, the blade whirled around, boring a hole as ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... the Others (SIDGWICK AND JACKSON) was the eldest of an orphaned family of girls and boys who were finding life a little boring in an English village; and when an unexpected legacy made her mistress of a couple of town lots in a place called Sunshine, in Western Canada, nothing would content her but to emigrate with the whole tribe—reinforced by a delightful Aunt Mary and an animal known as the Meritorious ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 26th, 1914 • Various
... dog. "Take back your bonny Mrs. Behn," said Walter Scott's great-aunt to him after a short inspection, "and if you will take my advice, put her in the fire, for I found it impossible to get through the very first novel." The nemesis of the pornographer: he can't avoid boring ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... it with Greek or Italian or Slavish words he had picked up. Or perhaps his eloquence would inflame some one of the interpreters afresh, and he would wait while the man shouted a few sentences to his compatriots. It was not necessary to consider the possibility of boring any one, for these were patient and long-suffering men, and ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... purposes), and the sword-bayonet, which serves both for cutting and thrusting. The advantage of the former was evidently its lightness and handiness; but it must be remembered that, save for thrusting, spiking a gun, or boring a hole in a leather strap, it was practically useless, whereas the sharp edge of the sword-bayonet makes it an excellent companion to Tommy Atkins on all sorts of occasions, ...
— Broad-Sword and Single-Stick • R. G. Allanson-Winn
... power, arbitrarily, whenever it suited their purpose to take it. To them Nathan represented a certain amount of talent to use up, a literary force of the motive power of ten pens to employ. Massol, one of those lawyers who mistake the faculty of endless speech for eloquence, who possess the art of boring by diffusiveness, the torment of all meetings and assemblies where they belittle everything, and who desire to become personages at any cost,—Massol no longer wanted the place as Keeper of the Seals; he had seen some five or six different men go through that office in four years, ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac
... forty-two feet in diameter, and sunk five feet into the solid rock. At the time when Ruby landed, it was being hewn out by a large party of the men. Others were boring holes in the rock near to it, for the purpose of fixing the great beams of a beacon, while others were cutting away the seaweed from the rock, and making preparations for the laying down of temporary rails ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... have lots of money and nothing to do. It is among these men that the patrons of expensive vice are to be found. Of necessity such men are bored by ordinary life. For life without work in it is always boring. It follows that they must seek excitement, and a very short time suffices for them to get all the excitement possible out of innocent recreations. Wherefore in pursuit of something to stir them they take to the diversions that are not innocent, and ...
— Men, Women, and God • A. Herbert Gray
... an accident. I happened to be the only man available who could do the work when Lord Kilbrooke died. I am telling you only what is an open secret. But I am afraid I am boring you. Shall we ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... us smith-work; and we loved them, for they were wise; and they married our sons and daughters; and we went on boring the mountain. ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... day, that he should be very glad to pick his brains when he came home. And then he laughed and said he was a 'deuced clever fellow'—excuse the adjective—and it was a great thing to be 'as free as that chap was'—'without all sorts of boring colleagues and responsibilities.' ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward |
