"Brakes" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... go down to the 'Little Sea,'" said Theodora; and we descended through the pasture, a large tract of grazing land, partly bushy, overgrown in many places by high, rank brakes, and at length came to a brook, running over a sandy bed. Here at a bend was an artificial pond, formed by a dam, built of stones laid up in a broad wall across the course of the brook. In one place the wall was six or seven feet in height; and through ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... exactly. I like to see things done decently and in order in the church. It always makes me nervous to get into a church where enthusiasm runs away with the meeting. It makes me feel somewhat as if I were in a trolley car that is running down grade while the motor-man has lost control of the brakes. It makes it uncomfortable to stay ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... the ancient times the Romans dreaded as the borders of hell. The Tiber rolls close by, yellow and muddy with the black buffaloes descending to its brink to drink, and the snakes and the toads in its brakes counting by millions—sad, always sad, whether swollen by flood in autumn and vomiting torrents of mud, or whether with naked sands and barren bed in summer, with the fever-vapors rising from its shallow ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... that are distinct and distinguished, with lines that suggest the etching-point rather than a brush loaded with paint. Cypresses shaped like flames, tall pines with the abrupt flatness of their tops, thin canes in the brakes, sharp aloes by the road-side, and olives with the delicate acuteness of the leaf—these make keen lines of slender vegetation. And they own the seasons by a gentle confession. Rather than be overpowered ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... who had thronged the grassy-bordered paths of the village dwindled in number; the riding and driving on the roads was less and less; the native life showed itself more in the sparsity of the sojourners. The sweet fern in the open fields, and the brakes and blackberry-vines among the bowlders, were blighted with the cold wind; even the sea-weed swaying at the foot of the rocks seemed to feel a sharper chill than that of the brine. A storm came, ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... coarse, and lose the fernlike quality altogether. You can plant this safely in the bit of old orchard that you are giving over to wild asters, black-eyed Susan, and sundrops, but mind you, be sure to take both Larry and Barney, together with a long post-hole spade, when you go out to dig brakes,—they are not things of shallow superficial ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... Last of all, the brakes having been taken from the field, some night—dear sport for the lads!—takes place the burning of the "hempherds," thus returning their elements to the soil. To kindle a handful of tow and fling it as a firebrand into one of those masses of tinder; to see the ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... during the short run to the well-remembered location of Tom's laboratory, and the man who was known as George Voight caught at his own throat with nervous fingers when they passed the tumbledown remains of the hut in which Old Crompton had spent so many years. With a screeching of well-worn brakes the car stopped before the laboratory, which was now almost hidden behind a mass ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... frail a mould, A hand may launch, a hand withhold: I, rather, with the leaping trout Wind, among lilies, in and out; I, the unnamed, inviolate, Green, rustic rivers, navigate; My dipping paddle scarcely shakes The berry in the bramble-brakes; Still forth on my green way I wend Beside the cottage garden-end; And by the nested angler fare, And take the lovers unaware. By willow wood and water-wheel Speedily fleets my touching keel; By all retired ...
— Underwoods • Robert Louis Stevenson
... then know all that was involved in what he reduced to such a simple colloquy. With that Yes and No the wheel of ages made another revolution. The breath which spoke them turned the balances in which the whole subsequent history of civilization hung. It was the Yes and No which applied the brakes to the Juggernaut of usurpation, whose ponderous wheels had been crushing through the centuries. It was the Yes and No which evidenced the reality of a power above all popes and empires. It was the Yes and No which spoke the supreme obligation of the human soul to obey ...
— Luther and the Reformation: - The Life-Springs of Our Liberties • Joseph A. Seiss
... precipitated the whole fabric to a terra-firma of absurdity failed to materialize. He cursed the rain, cursed it with his fluent precision which already had earned Fat Joe's admiring comment. He complained, querulously, like a half-aged boy, over the treacherous footing which the flooded alder brakes afforded. And once when he had felled a tree and narrowly missed being pinned beneath it, in spite of Steve's quick leap that dragged him aside, he plunged into an incisive diatribe concerning the perversity ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... sight of it Kendal suddenly slowed down, then jammed his brakes hard, and with an awful grinding and snorting the car came ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... awfully jolly at first. Whenever I went by train, I heard not only all the engines said, but what every blessed carriage thought, that joined in the conversation. If you chaps only knew what rot those whistles can get off! And as for the brakes, they can beat any mule driver in cursing. Then, after a time, it got rather monotonous, and I took a short sea trip for my health. But, by Jove, every blessed inch of the whole ship—from the screw to the bowsprit—had something to say, ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... point fifteen minutes, and even now he heard the clanging of handbells announcing the fact that hot coffee, sandwiches, and ready-prepared suppers were awaiting the half-starved passengers. The trucks grated harshly, the whirring groan of the air-brakes ran under him like a great sigh, and suddenly he was looking down into the face of a pop-eyed man who was clanging a bell, with all the strength of his right arm, under his window, and who, with this labour, was emitting ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... a living fragrance from the shore Of flowers yet fresh with childhood; on the ear Drips the light drop of the suspended oar. * * * * * At intervals, some bird from out the brakes Starts into voice a moment, then is still There seems a floating whisper on the hill, But that is fancy,—for the starlight dews All silently their tears of love instil, Weeping ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 470 - Volume XVII, No. 470, Saturday, January 8, 1831 • Various
... a shuffling of feet in the passage, a secret muttering at the head of the stairs, the crack of a banister, a thud as the shoulder of the coffin butted against the wall at the turn. Then the grinding scream of the brakes on the hill, the long "Shr-issh" of the checked wheels ploughing ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... of brakes is coming up for more attention in these days of high speed, heavy cars and crowded roads, and the total available braking power, which has hitherto been but partially taken advantage of, must be fully utilized. I refer to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 794, March 21, 1891 • Various
... another's woes A transient gloom upon my soul imprest, Like passing clouds impictur'd on thy breast. Life's current then ran sparkling to the noon, Or silvery stole beneath the pensive Moon: 30 Ah! now it works rude brakes and thorns among, Or o'er the rough rock bursts ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... great plain of Biguglia, had rolled northward before a hot and oppressive breeze, and the sun was now hidden. The carriage descended at a rapid trot, and once the man got down and silently examined his brakes. The road was a sort of cornice cut on the bare mountain side, and a stumble or the slipping of a brake-block would inevitably send the carriage rolling ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... came abreast, when from behind Betty's car sprang a woman right in front of mine (after her hat it appeared later, which the wind had just blown across the road). The apparition was so utterly unforeseen and unexpected that she was bowled over like a rabbit in two shakes. I jammed on the brakes and we sprang out, and saw she was under the car in between the wheel and the chassis. Luckily she was a small thin woman, and as Gaspard has so eloquently expressed it on another occasion, platte comme ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... is by thy praise oppress'd. Yet rob me not of all; but let me join My toils, my hazard, and my fame, with thine. The Trojan, not in stratagem unskill'd, Sends his light horse before to scour the field: Himself, thro' steep ascents and thorny brakes, A larger compass to the city takes. This news my scouts confirm, and I prepare To foil his cunning, and his force to dare; With chosen foot his passage to forelay, And place an ambush in the winding way. Thou, with thy Volscians, face ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... the cow darted off like lightning, dragging the unhappy seneschal after her. Nothing stopped the two inseparable comrades; they rushed over mountains and valleys, crossed marshes, rivers, quagmires, and brakes, glided over the seas without sinking, were frozen in Siberia and scorched in Africa, climbed the Himalayas, descended Mont Blanc, and at length, after thirty-six hours of a journey, the like of which had never been ...
— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various
... break-neck catastrophes which preceded what we considered a safe and successful vehicle. Not only was it immensely difficult to make, without either proper materials or tools, a sledge which could hold two people (for F—— declared it was no fun sleighing alone), but his "patent brakes" proved the most broken of reeds to lean upon when the sledge was dashing down the steep incline at the rate of a thousand miles ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... you," mocked Bess, and a moment later grasped her chum's arm in fright. "Did you see that?" she cried, as the driver put on his brakes and they stopped within about two inches of the back of a great lumbering truck. "I'm afraid this driver is going to kill us before ever we ...
— Nan Sherwood at Palm Beach - Or Strange Adventures Among The Orange Groves • Annie Roe Carr
... game, and the fact that they had put out the fire cut very little figure. There was much bickering. It seemed that Bert Taylor, in his enthusiasm, had, out of his own pocket, hired extra men who appeared at the critical moment to relieve the tired men at the brakes; and it was under their fresh impetus that the Monumental had so triumphantly "sucked." Now Bert Taylor was freely blamed. The regular men stoutly maintained that if they had been left alone this would never ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... half sleep of nights on a train is feverish and full of nightmares. Amedee suffered tortures from it. In the midst of the continual noise of the cars he thought he could hear sad voices crying loudly the name of a beloved lost one. Sometimes the tumult would become quiet for a little; brakes, springs, wheels, all parts of the furious cast-iron machine seemed to him tired of howling the deafening rhythmical gallop, and the vigorously rocked traveller could distinguish in the diminished uproar a strain of music, at first ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... o'clock of a fine morning, and the train was toiling up a precipitous grade to the spine of the mountain, where the down-slope would begin and air-brakes rule. Pobloff looked about him. He scratched his long nose, a characteristic gesture, and began wondering when coffee would be ready. He pressed the bell. The guard entered, a miserable bandit who bravely wore his peaked hat with green plumes a la Tyrol. ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... Smith's car was red. "Oh, green's the thing," he retorted airily; "an' see!" he added; and forthwith he burst into a paean of praise, in which tires, horns, lamps, pumps, baskets, brakes, and mud-guards were the dominant notes. It almost seemed, indeed, that he had bought the gorgeous thing before him to look at and talk about rather than to use, so loath was he to stop talking and set the wheels to moving. Not until Diantha had twice ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter
... later, with a deep gulp of intense excitement, and a general racket as if an engine had broken loose from brakes and checks, and was carrying all before it, the monarch of the woods crashed through the alders and halted, with his hoofs in the water, scarcely thirty yards from where the boat ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... not one of its owner's rivals had ever failed to wish it smaller, and not one of its owner's satellites had ever seen it without praise. They somewhat avoided the roadway passing under the huge, misshapen, ragged trees, and through fern brakes, ruddy and crisp in their decay. On reaching a suitable eminence, the father and son stood still to look upon the many-chimneyed building, or rather conglomeration of buildings, to which these groves and glades formed ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... to be explored, it is said not to have been claimed in individual property by any nation of Indians. Its extensive forests, grassy plains and thick cane brakes, abounding with every variety of game common to such latitudes, were used as common hunting grounds, and considered by them, as open for all who chose to resort to them. The Cherokees, the Chickasaws, the Cataubas, ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... her marketing. In the tiny market-place on the top of the hill, where four roads, from Nottingham and Derby, Ilkeston and Mansfield, meet, many stalls were erected. Brakes ran in from surrounding villages. The market-place was full of women, the streets packed with men. It was amazing to see so many men everywhere in the streets. Mrs. Morel usually quarrelled with her lace woman, sympathised with her fruit man—who was a gabey, but his ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... gathering, his wife, and even Jacqueline, would try to convince him that a little amusement would be good for him; they were unwilling to leave him to the repose he needed, prescribed for him by the doctors, who had been unanimous that he must "put down the brakes," give less attention to business, avoid late hours and over-exertion of all kinds. "And, above all," said one of the lights of science whom he had consulted recently about certain feelings of faintness ...
— Jacqueline, v2 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... live, poor wanderer of the wood and field, The bitter little that of life remains: No more the thickening brakes and verdant plains To thee shall home, or food, or ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... blood. His wife was a Choctaw Indian. Grandpa was a small red Indian. They kept my pa hid out with stock nearly all time of the Civil War. Both my mas' parents was nearly all Indian too but they was mixed. I'm more Indian than anything else. I heard pa talk about staying in the cane brakes. Mighty few cane brakes to be found now. I come with my grandpa and grandma to Arkansas when I was five ...
— Slave Narratives: Arkansas Narratives - Arkansas Narratives, Part 6 • Works Projects Administration
... came by, and again the rebels sent out their challenge, and again the challenge was ignored. "Halt! Halt! Halt!..." The chauffeur drove on, and the rebels fired on the occupants of the car. There was a swift application of brakes, and the car slithered up against the pavement ... and as it slithered, a man stood up beside the driver, holding his hand to his side, and yelled, ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... "Emergency brakes," declared the conductor, catching up his cash box and thrusting his papers and tickets into it. "Nothing much; probably ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... care to follow a cobra into its hole. It was dark in the hole; and Rikki-tikki never knew when it might open out and give Nagaina room to turn and strike at him. He held on savagely, and stuck out his feet to act as brakes on the dark slope ...
— The Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... wench, and she would not chide us for tumbling of her women in the Brakes. She's liberal, and by my Bow they say she's honest, and whether that be a fault, I have nothing to ...
— Philaster - Love Lies a Bleeding • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... led us, not to the rough brakes along the river, but toward the high open country, for reasons that appeared later. We were close together as we rose to the upland and sighted the chase half a mile off, just as Dander came up with the Wolf and snapped at ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... use the old-fashioned word in such a connection—had left the free forest for Will's Coffee-house, and haunted ladies' boudoirs instead of the brakes of the enchanted island. Her wings were clogged with 'gums and pomatums,' and her 'thin essence' had shrunk 'like a rivel'd flower.' But a delicate fancy is a delicate fancy still, even when employed about the paraphernalia ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... people who still have wild game take heed now, and clamp down the brakes, hard and fast before it is too late, or will they ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... limits without being molested. She then looked at her watch, and slowed down her car. She kept the speedometer needle wavering within the speed law till she set her brakes before the building where the law firm of Starr and Jordan maintained their offices. Harold was so surprised to see his sister that he gave her the name of the Trust Company for which she asked before he realized what he was doing. She glanced at the clock, hastily scribbled the address ...
— Captain Pott's Minister • Francis L. Cooper
... load has not been blessed to my health, and I have had to draw in my horns a little, but M. and I work generally like two day-laborers for the wages we get, and those wages are flowers here, there and everywhere, to say nothing of ferns, brakes, mosses, scarlet berries, and the like. And when flowers fail we fall back on different shades of green; the German ivy being relieved by a background of dark foliage, or light grasses against grave ones; and when we hit on any new combination, each summons the other to be lost in admiration. ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... chanced one evening, ('twas the lover's day) Conceal'd in brakes the jealous kindred lay; When Hesiod, wandering, mused along the plain, And fix'd his seat where Love had fix'd the scene: A strong suspicion straight possess'd their mind, (For poets ever were a gentle ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... should be in the clouds all the time. It's a bonny little model and answers my hand like a tender-mouthed horse. The engine is a ten-cylinder rotary Robur working up to one hundred and seventy-five. It has all the modern improvements—enclosed fuselage, high-curved landing skids, brakes, gyroscopic steadiers, and three speeds, worked by an alteration of the angle of the planes upon the Venetian-blind principle. I took a shot-gun with me and a dozen cartridges filled with buck-shot. You should have seen the face of Perkins, ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... picked out a good landing place in the dim light of the breaking dawn, and went to earth. Jamming on the brakes he leaped from the pilot house to the stern of his own craft, catching up his electric rifle. The other airship, caught by the grappling anchor at the end of a long rope, was just settling down, those in her having the good sense to shut off their power, and ...
— Tom Swift and his Great Searchlight • Victor Appleton
... great trees in their July bravery—more trees than Paul imagined could be in the world. There were sunlit upland patches and cool dells of shade carpeted with golden buttercups, where cattle fed lazily. Once a herd of fallow deer browsing by the wayside scuttled away at the noisy approach of the brakes. Only afterward did Paul learn their name and nature: to him then they were mythical beasts of fairyland. Once also the long pile-of the Tudor house came into view, flashing-white in the sunshine. The teacher in charge of the brake explained that it was the Marquis ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... would stop and fall to the ground. You could not shoot a bullet any distance; as soon as the gases of the gunpowder had stopped pushing against it, it would stop dead and fall. There would be no need of brakes on trains or automobiles; the instant the steam or gasoline was shut off, the train or auto would come to a dead stop. But you would not be jerked in the least by the stopping, because as soon as the automobile or train stopped, ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... dim shouts far behind me for a while, then no more. The roadside whipped by, two long streaks of green. We whizzed across the railroad track in front of the day express, accompanied by the engine's frantic shriek of "down brakes." If a shoe had caught in the track—ah! I lost my hat, my gold hatpin, every hairpin, and brown locks ...
— A Woman Tenderfoot • Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
... condition of greed and grudge of all travellers on errands of pleasure, we made haste to anticipate any rush for the carriages outside the station which were to take us to the scene of the races. Oddly enough there was no great pressure for these vehicles, or for the more public brakes and char-a-bancs and omnibuses plying to the same destination; and so far from falling victims to covert extortion in the matter of fares, we found the flys conscientiously placarded with the price ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... he called to the good-natured truckman who sat behind the wheel, and the latter obligingly put on the brakes. ...
— Anything Once • Douglas Grant
... somewhat dangerous sport, especially in cities or where the turns are sharp and there is danger of upsetting. A good bob is broad between the runners and low to the ground. The drawing shows one that almost any boy can make at little cost. Various devices are used as brakes on a bob. Most of them are found to be out of order or frozen when the time comes to use them. A brake that is made from a piece of iron bent in an angle and fastened to the side of the runners on the rear ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... which prevented the country being peopled again. There the Devil was in his home. Of the few inhabitants most were his zealous worshippers. Whatever attractions he might have found in the rough brakes of Lorraine, the black pine-forests of the Jura, or the briny deserts of Burgos, his preferences lay, perhaps, in our western marches. There might be found not only the visionary shepherd, that Satanic union of the goat and the goatherd, but also a closer conspiracy with nature, a deeper insight ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... hand on the wheel, his feet on the brakes, slipped through the crowded streets unchallenged. It had been easy to unlock the car. He had learned many things in these ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... back in the dry salt-grass with which the whole of our little peninsula is bedded. The willows and brakes are our curtains, through which the rising moon looks in at us, and the setting sun; the sun rises long before we see him, above the dark-blue ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... train was at length heard. The engine, as it approached, was switched upon a side-track, but the cars, from which it had been detached, kept on their course until the brakes brought them to a stand in the depot. The passengers now swarmed forth by hundreds—a curious and motley crowd of men, women, and children; good-looking people, and ill-looking ones; the fine lady in silk, and the rough backwoods-man in homespun; the middle-aged woman in black, with three trunks ...
— Oscar - The Boy Who Had His Own Way • Walter Aimwell
... back to his car, while Hal and Chester leaped aboard the locomotive. In response to a signal, Hal released the brakes, gently opened the throttle, and the great engine began to forge ...
— The Boy Allies On the Firing Line - Or, Twelve Days Battle Along the Marne • Clair W. Hayes
... persuasive—it seems strange that Mr. Lincoln's Inaugural Address did not disarm at least the personal resentment of the South toward him, and sufficiently strengthen the Union-loving people there, against the red-hot Secessionists, to put the "brakes" down on Rebellion. ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... and had felt Chok'd and imprison'd in a modern belt, Which some rare genius now has twined about The good old house, to keep old neighbours out. Along his valleys, in the evening-hours, The borough-damsels stray'd to gather flowers, Or by the brakes and brushwood of the park, To take their pleasant rambles in the dark. "Some prudes, of rigid kind, forbore to call On the kind females—favourites at the hall; But better nature saw, with much delight, The different orders of mankind ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... on an old- fashioned poke-bonnet of deep pink, her red dress was of old- fashioned homespun, her stockings were of yarn, and her rough shoes should have been on the feet of a boy. Had the vanished forests and cane-brakes of the eighteenth century covered the land, had the wild beasts and wild men come back to roam them, had the little girl's home been a stockade on the edge of the wilderness, she would have fitted perfectly to the time and the scene, as a little daughter of Daniel ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... answer her, desperately trying to think of something to say that would not alarm her, when their taxicab, with a sudden application of the brakes, came to a sharp stop. Bentley noticed that they were at the intersection of Twenty-second Street and Fifth Avenue. The lights were still green, but nevertheless ...
— The Mind Master • Arthur J. Burks
... white Italian roads. We reached Rome. I had one day in the Eternal City while Francois replaced a broken gear, and then we went on to Foligno, where we paced the Corso for an afternoon and the Frenchman fixed up his brakes. Late that night at Perugia we broke down at the foot of the hill and we had to climb to our hotel. At this last mishap Bennett began to show annoyance, for he had not as yet recovered his full strength, and the next morning, over our coffee and rolls, he proposed that we go by rail to ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... brakes," made experienced passengers spring to their feet. Windows opened; heads were thrust out. What had happened to this express train? The unaccustomed sound startled the village also. It was an aristocratic little place, settled by wealthy ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... a great many brakes on the head of the Brazos, and in them grow cedar thickets. I forget now what the duty was that we were there on, but there were about twenty of us in the detachment at the time. One morning, shortly after daybreak, another ...
— Cattle Brands - A Collection of Western Camp-fire Stories • Andy Adams
... scalding pitch roll down The crackling, sweating pines, And streams of smoke, like water-spouts, Burst through the rumbling mines; I asked the firemen why they made Such noise about the town; They answered not,—but all the while The brakes went up ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... with it, I suppose. Very well. I yield to mine. This afternoon I will have the pleasure of calling at The Brakes." ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... is rung in the cab of each locomotive simultaneously, and will continue to ring until the danger is over. This with the powerful electric headlights now used, with which the roadbed is lit up for a distance of five miles, makes a head-on collision almost impossible, while the air brakes, heavy rails, solid roadbed, doing away with the sharp curves and heavy grades, all add to the safety of the passengers and the saving of many miles in travel and many precious moments. It has always seemed strange to me that so many Americans rush off to Europe and foreign countries every year ...
— The Life and Adventures of Nat Love - Better Known in the Cattle Country as "Deadwood Dick" • Nat Love
... you an idea of the scenes of the highest comedy that lay behind this algebraic statement of his career; his useless patience dogging the footsteps of fortune, which presently took wings, his long tramps over the thorny brakes of Paris, his breathless chases as a petitioner, his attempts to win over fools; the schemes laid only to fail through the influence of some frivolous woman; the meetings with men of business who expected their capital to bring them places and a peerage, ...
— Z. Marcas • Honore de Balzac
... rare that a bicycle started out from their hands in a state of pedantic efficiency. Romantic possibilities of accident lurked in the worn thread of the screw that adjusted the saddle, in the precarious pedals, in the loose-knit chain, in the handle-bars, above all in the brakes and tyres. Tappings and clankings and strange rhythmic creakings awoke as the intrepid hirer pedalled out into the country. Then perhaps the bell would jam or a brake fail to act on a hill; or the seat-pillar would get loose, and the saddle drop three or four inches ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... on the first of that buxom month. Long ere the dawn, the crowds had sought mead and woodland, to cut poles and wreathe flowers. Many a mead then lay fair and green beyond the village of Charing, and behind the isle of Thorney, (amidst the brakes and briars of which were then rising fast and fair the Hall and Abbey of Westminster;) many a wood lay dark in the starlight, along the higher ground that sloped from the dank Strand, with its numerous canals or dykes;—and on either side of the great road ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the doorway with her flour sack in her hand looking at Prouty as the brakes relaxed and the wheels began to grind. It was not exactly the way in which she had pictured her first trip into the world, but, with a cynical smile, it was as near the realization ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... were completed in the Spanish camp, the bright arms and banners of the French were seen glistening in the distance amid the tall fennel and cane-brakes with which the country was thickly covered. As soon as they had come in view of the Spanish encampment, they were brought to a halt, while a council of war was called, to determine the expediency of giving battle that evening. The duke of Nemours would have ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... later, some outriders, sent before him by the count, entered the chateau, saying that their master and mistress were close at hand. In fact, they were promptly followed by brakes and travelling-carriages, and at length the countess's litter was descried, which M. de Saint-Geran, on horse back, had never lost sight of during the journey. It was a triumphal reception: all the peasants had left their work, and filled the air with shouts ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... of Gaunt, who made very great additions to the mansion, always afterwards called the Lancaster Buildings. Henry himself, too, had been much employed in improving this place, and surrounding it with pleasure-grounds and arbours,[217] instead of the thorns and brakes which had formerly been seen there. Just seven years before this visit with his Queen, he had drained and planted the rough land near the castle; and the local historians tells us the spot was called "The Plesance in ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... murmurs on a pebble bar, as if its feet were tickled. A few more steps and it burst into a peal of laughter that lasted half the year as it tumbled over narrow shelves of rock into a foamy pool. Many a day I had sat fishing for hours at the little fall under a birch tree, among the brakes and moss. No ray of sunlight ever got to the dark water below me—the lair of many a big fish that had yielded to the temptation of my bait. Here I lay in the cool shade while a singular sort of heart sickness ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... was also occasionally met with, in the brakes of bamboo, where these gigantic canes, four or five inches in diameter, and rising to a height of over fifty feet, grew so close together that even a snake would have found difficulty in working its way through them. Fortunately, their stems being hollow, they are easily brought down, and a single ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... foot it, Fauns And Dryad-maids together; your gifts I sing. And thou, for whose delight the war-horse first Sprang from earth's womb at thy great trident's stroke, Neptune; and haunter of the groves, for whom Three hundred snow-white heifers browse the brakes, The fertile brakes of Ceos; and clothed in power, Thy native forest and Lycean lawns, Pan, shepherd-god, forsaking, as the love Of thine own Maenalus constrains thee, hear And help, O lord of Tegea! And thou, too, Minerva, from whose hand the olive sprung; And boy-discoverer ...
— The Georgics • Virgil
... eight hours. The explanation of the elongation is simple: the earth rotates in about twenty-four hours, while the moon encircles it but once in nearly twenty-eight days, so that our satellite is continually drawing the oceans backward against its motion. These tidal brakes acting through the friction of the water on the bottom, its unequal pressure, and the impact of the waves on the shore, are continually retarding its rotation, so that the day is a fraction of a second longer now than it was in the time of Caesar. This same action is of ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... Minehead, and found that quaint little watering-place fully astir; for so far as it could have a "season," that season was now on. A considerable number of tourists were about, and coaches and brakes were getting ready in the streets for those who were inclined to undertake the twenty miles drive from Minehead to Lynton. Seeing a baker's shop open he went in and asked the cheery-looking woman behind ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... years past the Squire was to have been found among the former and more prudent set of riders, but on this occasion he went gallantly through the thickest of the underwood, close at the huntsman's heels. "You'll find it rather nasty, Mr. Newton, among them brakes," Cox had said to him. But the Squire had answered that he hadn't got his Sunday face on, ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... dear. Nothing serious, I guess. The engineer must have put the brakes on too quickly. I'll look ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at School • Laura Lee Hope
... the concrete persons who embody it—which is spoken of. May we recall the old distinction that God loves the sinner while He hates the sin? The picture is vivid. The wicked—and all the enemies of this King are wicked, in the prophet's view—are like some of these thorn-brakes, that cannot be laid hold of, even to root them out, but need to be attacked with sharp pruning-hooks on long shafts, or burned where they grow. There is a destructive side to the coming of the King, shadowed in every prophecy of him, and brought emphatically to prominence in his own descriptions ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... was thumped on the deck, and a sailor said, "Turn out, boys; she's going down!" Worn out with want of rest, their hands and feet half flayed, the men staggered out and went desperately to work again. The brakes of the pumps hung far above their heads, and after toiling for three hours one of the standards broke and things looked hopeless. By six o'clock next day there were four and a half feet of water in the hold, and still the struggle was kept up with ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... came to grief. The cable was running out freely at the rate of six miles per hour, while the ship was making only four. This was supposed to be owing to a powerful undercurrent. To check this waste of the cable the engineer applied the brakes firmly, which at once stopped the machine. The effect was to bring a heavy strain on the cable that was in the water. The stern of the ship was down in the trough of the sea, and as it rose upward on the swell, the pressure was too great, and the cable parted. The alarm was at once given, and ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... down. Lieutenant-Colonel Walker, of the center column, visited his camp and was two days behind him. He should have immediately joined him, to carry out his instructions. Cole was headed toward the Tongue River, near the Wolf Mountains. When he got into the brakes of the Powder River, he discovered many signs of Indians. This is a very rough country, and he had great difficulty in getting his long trains through it; however, he dropped into the valley about ...
— The Battle of Atlanta - and Other Campaigns, Addresses, Etc. • Grenville M. Dodge
... in the two parts of "Antonio and Mellida," we see the poet at his best—and also at his worst. A vehement and resolute desire to give weight to every line and emphasis to every phrase has too often misled him into such brakes and jungles of crabbed and convulsive bombast, of stiff and tortuous exuberance, that the reader in struggling through some of the scenes and speeches feels as though he were compelled to push his way through a cactus hedge: the hot and ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... infantry following; and the advanced force halted at Ahmed-I-shama for the night. Not a single habitation was passed, during the nine miles march. The road was generally a mere track, 6 feet wide; passing through tangled brakes of dwarf palms, intersected by stony gullies, except when it ran along the ...
— For Name and Fame - Or Through Afghan Passes • G. A. Henty
... "Better put on the brakes a bit. Your mom and I think about the same, I guess, that the girl's a likely enough lady and she surely is easy to look at, but she ain't what we'd pick out for you if we had the say. It's like some of these here fancy ridin' horses people buy. They're all right for ridin' but no ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... musings as the train shrieked out its on-coming call to the little one-room station-house, at Littleton. From the window they could see that the whole town seemed to be gathered about its doors. The platform, tracks, and surrounding buildings were black with people. As the brakes were put on, lessening their speed and the roar of the train, cheer after cheer reached them from without. The air was full of waving caps, handkerchiefs, and aprons. Now they could begin to distinguish separate groups and faces. Mrs. ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... car and the other thrown over a hook opposite and brought into tension by a right and left hand screw between the links. This is obviously very inconvenient for shunting purposes, especially as the cars are not provided with hand brakes and no chance to get at them if there were any. Consequently it appears that when a train is made up it stays so for an indefinite period. A load of passengers is brought into the station and the train remains in position until ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 810, July 11, 1891 • Various
... the railway slips across the wooded Jura into Switzerland, is like a winding corridor cleft deep between savage and precipitous walls. There are dizzy glimpses into the gulf below. With steam shut off and brakes partly on, the train curves sharply, hiding its eyes in many tunnels lest the passengers turn giddy. Strips of bright green meadow- land, where the Areuse flows calmly, alternate with places where the ravine plunges ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... admits of the passage of horses, there being little underbrush, and few tangled brakes. The plan of Hawkeye is the one which has always proved the most successful in the battles between the whites and the Indians. Wayne, in his celebrated campaign on the Miami, received the fire of his enemies in line; and then causing ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... even are carpeted deep with moss, and the old gnarled branches of the oaks have a coating of thick, bright velvet. It is now the middle of November; and the young grass is springing up after the rain, and even where it does not grow there is no bare earth, but brown oak-leaves and brakes, with soft warm colors, particularly when the sun strikes across them. The skies, too, are like those at home, with the magnificent sunrise and sunset that only clouds can give. The California sky is, much of the time, ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton
... There the spekboom spreads its bowers Of light green leaves and lilac flowers; And the aloe rears her crimson crest, Like stately queen for gala drest And the bright-blossomed bean-tree shakes Its coral tufts above the brakes, Brilliant as the glancing plumes Of sugar-birds among its blooms, With the deep-green verdure blending In the stream ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... of the big touring-car Anderson hastily leaped to the side of the road. A couple of small headlights veered around a curve in the road and came down the slight grade, followed naturally and somewhat haltingly by an automobile whose timorous brakes were half set. There ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... need of orders. As soon as the chauffeur of the leading car spied a blotch of khaki against the road, on went his brakes, and we would come sliding into the midst of the troops and stop. Johnson would be out before his car had fairly stopped, and at work upon the lashings of the little piano, with me to help him. And Hogge would already be clearing his throat ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... from here ... The sunshine in the happy glens is fair, And by the sea, and in the brakes The grass is cool, the sea-side ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... an unconscious telepathy, the girl almost interpreted his unspoken thought. She watched his deft manipulation of levers and brakes, and fancied that his hands dwelt on the ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... parcel to the local agent at the Grossing, when Brevoort and Pete entered. With his back toward them and absorbed in launching the package he did not see them as they angled quickly to the other door and dropped off into the night. The train slowed almost to a stop, the grinding brakes eased, and it drew away, leaving Pete and Brevoort squatting behind a row of empty oil barrels along ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... the effort. His brakes shrieked, and still the car shot on with scarcely abated speed, for the wheels could secure no purchase in the thin sand of the roadway. Andy's heart stood still in sympathy as he saw the face of the driver whiten and grow ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand |
