"Chisel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... level of the cliff—in these extreme basins, there used often to lurk a marvellous profusion of animal and vegetable forms. My Father would search for the roughest and most corroded points of rock, those offering the best refuge for a variety of creatures, and would then chisel off fragments as low down in the water as he could. These pieces of rock were instantly plunged in the saltwater of jars which we had brought with us for the purpose. When as much had been collected as we could carry away— my Father always dragged about an immense square basket, ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... ne'er saw justice done, and yet she was A frequent model; and if e'er she must Yield to stern Time and Nature's wrinkling laws, They will destroy a face which mortal thought Ne'er compassed, nor less mortal chisel wrought. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... Swinburne and far more perfect. In this verbal sense its most arresting quality is a combination of something haunting and harmonious that flows by like a river or a song, with something else that is compact and pregnant like a pithy saying picked out in rock by the chisel of some pagan philosopher. It is at once a tune that escapes and an inscription that remains. Thus, alone among the reckless and romantic verses that first rose in Coleridge or Keats, it preserves something also of the wit and civilisation of the eighteenth century. Lines like "a Muezzin from ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... great running bird, far taller than an ostrich, with a vulture-like neck and cruel head which made it a walking death. As Challenger climbed to safety one dart of that savage curving beak shore off the heel of his boot as if it had been cut with a chisel. This time at least modern weapons prevailed and the great creature, twelve feet from head to foot—phororachus its name, according to our panting but exultant Professor—went down before Lord Roxton's rifle in a flurry of waving feathers and kicking limbs, with two remorseless yellow ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... London with a couple of hundred thousand men: no, he hasn't done that,' the earl said, glancing back in his mind through Beauchamp's career. 'And he escapes what Stukely calls his nation's scourge, in the shape of a statue turned out by an English chisel. No: we haven't had much public excitement out of him. But one thing he did do: he got ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and leaning with pain on a broken spear, whilst the laws of the twelve tables drop from her left hand. On the parvis before this porch is erected, on the left, the statue of Sabina herself, and on the right, the statue of Erwin of Steinbach, both due to the chisel ...
— Historical Sketch of the Cathedral of Strasburg • Anonymous
... a chisel before, but he chipped and cut away the marble so marvellously that life seemed to spring out of the stone. There was a marble head of an old faun in the garden, and this Michelangelo set himself to copy. Such a wonderful copy did ...
— Knights of Art - Stories of the Italian Painters • Amy Steedman
... gone on working with his chisel with just as much zest if his creations had been doomed to meet no mortal eye but his own. This indifference to the popular reception of his dream-figures lent him a curious artistic aplomb that carried him through the ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... deep by 6 inches diameter with smooth perpendicular sides. There is no adjunct to the flippers which appears to be of service in the digging, yet the holes are such that a man would find it impossible to make without the use of a chisel. Whether they are dug with the flippers, or bored, or bitten out with the bill, does not appear to be known. Eggs varying in numbers from 120 to 150 are deposited in each shaft, and covered loosely with the ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... and no longer quarrel upon it),—Kur-Sachsen has a good deal to do in the Election preludings, formalities and prearrangements; and is capable, as Kur-Pfalz and Cousin always are, of serving as chisel to Belleisle's mallet, in such points, which will plentifully ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... by telephony was unquestionably E. H. Harriman. In the mansion that he built at Arden, there were a hundred telephones, sixty of them linked to the long-distance lines. What the brush is to the artist, what the chisel is to the sculptor, the telephone was to Harriman. He built his fortune with it. It was in his library, his bathroom, his private car, his camp in the Oregon wilder-ness. No transaction was too large or too involved to be settled over its wires. He saved the credit of the Erie by telephone—lent ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... thee have I seen, My brother sweet, and yet, as tribute sad, The bitter tears have poured adown my cheek, And sadly mindful of thy absence now I chisel here this ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... same spirit that animated the Doctor. And so by turns they kept the axe and shovel flying, making very rapid progress. They soon were too deep to use long-handled tools, and resorted to mallet and chisel, and a short-handled hand axe. Slowly and more slowly progressed the work as the shaft grew deeper. Finally the head of the man in the shaft disappeared below the surface, being ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... statue of Philip Lebon, the inventor of lighting by gas, occurred on the 26th of June, at Chaumont, under the auspices of the Technical Gas Society of France. The statue, which we illustrate herewith, is due to the practiced chisel of the young sculptor Antide Pechine, who has perfectly understood his work, and has represented the inventor at the moment at which he observes a flame start from a glass balloon in which he had heated some sawdust. The attitude is graceful and the expression of the face ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 611, September 17, 1887 • Various
... muttered Joyce. She grasped the chisel and inserted it in the crack, pushing on it with all her might. But the door resisted, and Cynthia was just uttering ...
— The Boarded-Up House • Augusta Huiell Seaman
... broad border, where is set forth the late triumph, and ambassadors, captives, and animals of all parts of the earth, especially of the East, are seen in their appropriate forms and habits. That is all from the chisel of my brother. Behold here'—and rising he approached the vase, and vast as it was, by a touch, so was it constructed, turned it round—'behold here, where is figured the Great Queen of—'; in the enthusiasm of art, he had forgotten ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... were sharp, strenuous lines that had conquered it and taught it to pray. Over those seamed cheeks there was a certain pallor, a greyness caught from many a vigil. It was as though, after Nature had done her worst with that face, some fine chisel had gone over it, chastening and almost transfiguring it. Tonight, as his muscles twitched with emotion, and the perspiration dropped from his hair and chin, there was a certain convincing power ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... but, on coming to the depth of three Spanish yards (varas), the abundance of water obliged him to abandon it, and no attempts have since been made to resume the working. When the silver is not found in solid masses, which requires to be cut with the chisel, it is generally finely sprinkled through the lode, and often serves to nail together the particles of stone through which it is disseminated."[81]—"The ores of the Pastiano mine, near the Carmen, were so rich that the lode was worked by bars, with ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... is a good commentary upon such discipline: A blacksmith brought up his son, to whom he was very severe, to his own trade. The urchin was, nevertheless, an audacious dog. One day the old vulcan was attempting to harden a cold chisel which he had made of foreign steel, but could not succeed; "horsewhip it, father," exclaimed the youth, "if that will not harden it, ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... thought struck him. Pulling off his coat, he seized a mallet and a calking-chisel, and began to belabour the side of a boat as if his life depended on it. All at once he stopped and stood ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... not harder than Porphyry or Agate, the Chisel of my love, drove by the Mallet of my fidelity, would have made some impression on thee. I, that have shaped as I pleased the most untoward of substances, hoped by the Compass of reason, the Plummet of discretion, ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... generally associated with the human figure in art, and thus sculpture, which deals chiefly with the human form, becomes familiar with geometric motives and acquires them. Through sculpture these motives enter architecture. But textile decoration pervades architecture before the sculptor's chisel begins to carve ornament in stone and before architecture has developed of itself the rudiments of a system of surface embellishment. Textile art in mats, covers, shelters, and draperies is intimately associated with floors and walls of houses, and the textile ...
— A Study Of The Textile Art In Its Relation To The Development Of Form And Ornament • William H. Holmes
... style of art, with frescoed ceilings, and splendid mirrors, and tesselated floors of variegated marble. The furniture was embellishcd with gorgeous carvings, and enriched with marble, jasper and verd-antique. The galleries were filled with the most costly productions of the chisel and the pencil. The spacious garden, spread out before the palace, was cultivated with the utmost care, and ornamented with fountains ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... was new?" The Elgin Marbles are allowed by common consent to be the perfection of art. But how much of our feeling of reverence is inspired by time? Imagine the Parthenon as it must have looked with the frieze of the mighty Phidias fresh from the chisel. Could one behold it in all its pristine beauty and splendour we should see a white marble building, blinding in the dazzling brightness of a southern sun, the figures of the exquisite frieze in all probability painted—there is more than ...
— The Mind of the Artist - Thoughts and Sayings of Painters and Sculptors on Their Art • Various
... to be American, but, despite Bartlett, really old English from Lancashire, the land which has supplied many of the so-called "American" neologisms. A gouge is a hollow chisel, a scoop; and to gouge is to poke out the eye: this is done by thrusting the fingers into the side-hair thus acting as a base and by prising out the ball with the thumbnail which ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... to his soul within with paint brush, chisel or loom, and the quality of his production is proportionate to the development of his ...
— The Planet Mars and its Inhabitants - A Psychic Revelation • Eros Urides and J. L. Kennon
... countenance. Mental energy culminates in its modulations, while the finest physical features combine to make them a consummate work of art. But all the musical, ocular, and facial beauties are absent from writing. The savage knows, or could quickly guess, the use of the brush or chisel, the shuttle or locomotive, but not of the pen. Writing is the only dead art, the only institute of either gods or men so artificial that the natural mind can discover ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... wife's dress, the child's wretched rags. Men, born doubtless to be beautiful—for all creatures have a relative beauty—are enrolled from their childhood beneath the yoke of force, beneath the rule of the hammer, the chisel, the loom, and have been promptly vulcanized. Is not Vulcan, with his hideousness and his strength, the emblem of this strong and hideous nation—sublime in its mechanical intelligence, patient in its season, and once in a century terrible, inflammable ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac
... jealousy of the gifts of another were foreign to her. Love of nature, and especially of fine trees, was one of her most noticeable characteristics. "There will be trees in my heaven," she once said to the writer. But works of art, of the chisel, the brush, the pencil and the loom were her delight. She loved the city, its crowding humanity, its stores and its galleries. She loved London even more than New York. Continental travel was her chief pleasure and diversion. A long period of physical suffering, caused by an accident, ...
— Memories of Jane Cunningham Croly, "Jenny June" • Various
... that were used required preparation. The stones must be quarried, squared, and fitted for the building with many a hard knock and cutting of the chisel. So must you and I, my readers, pass through the new birth, and be prepared by the Holy Spirit to fit us for the spiritual building composed of living stones; and if not made meet for that building, we shall be eventually found lifting ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... here in England we have been taught to hate the word by the evil effects of those absurd attempts which have been made elsewhere to proclaim it as a fact accomplished by the scratch of a pen or by a chisel on a stone. We have been injured in that, because a good word signifying a grand idea has been driven out of the vocabulary of good men. Equality would be a heaven, if we could attain it. How can we to whom so much has been given dare to think otherwise? How can you look at ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... to them except the dressing. We had now gone all around, and were almost at the dressing-room where we started. And when we went in again we found that the dressing was nothing but knocking off any rough lumps with a chisel. I remember every bit of it. And every time I look at dishes I think there are ever so many things we use every day and don't ...
— Illustrated Science for Boys and Girls • Anonymous
... fail to feel the same thrill. Out of the disc of blued steel the artisan has worked the soaring form of a bird with upraised wings. It is indicated in skeleton fashion by bars extraordinarily energetic, yet suavely modulated. There must have been feeling and intelligence in every touch of the chisel and file that wrought it. Could that same object seen occasionally in a museum showcase afford me any comparable pleasure? Is not the education of the eye, like the education of the sentiments, dependent upon stable associations that can ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... hours passed, however, before Mirza Shah came back. His face was white as marble—every feature seemed set, as the sculptor's chisel fixes each line of the carved stone. He spoke to me ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... is commanding the interest of a steadily growing class outside the practical workers with the chisel, or the professional critics. Clara Erskine Clement's new book[J] is on the plan of her "Outline History of Painting." For beginners in the sculptor's art, it is an admirable text-book, which must be welcomed by all in that class, while to the amateur, or the mere admirer of the ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, January 1886 - Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 1, January, 1886 • Various
... learn my profession of a man called Sam Newton, I believe; at least I will call him that for the sake of argument. My business was to weigh wheat, deduct as much as possible on account of cockle, pigeon grass and wild buckwheat, and to chisel the honest farmer out of all he would stand. This was the programme with Mr. Newton; but I am happy to say that it met with its reward, and the sheriff afterward ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... little shop beside the stable filled with shining tools which Willie and I, in spite of their attractions, were forbidden to touch. Willie, by dire experience, had learned to keep the law; but on one occasion I stole in alone, and promptly cut my finger with a chisel. My mother and Cousin Jenny accepted the fiction that the injury had been done with a flint arrowhead that Willie had given me, but when Cousin Robert came home and saw my bound hand and heard the story, he gave me a certain look ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... was probably irregular, varying in its form as the increase of inmates demanded additional room. But though irregular, it was certainly a noble edifice, faced with Caen stone, and richly adorned by the chisel of the sculptor. Its walls embraced an area of 32 acres, 2 rods, 11 perches, and it was not less remarkable for its magnificence than extent. The length of the church was 150 feet, having an altitude of 60 feet. It was supported by thirty-two pillars, ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes
... the beings of another world ought to be at once mysterious and picturesque. That of Milton is so. That of Dante is picturesque indeed beyond any that ever was written. Its effect approaches to that produced by the pencil or the chisel. But it is picturesque to the exclusion of all mystery. This is a fault on the right side, a fault inseparable from the plan of Dante's poem, which, as we have already observed, rendered the utmost accuracy of description necessary. Still it is a fault. The supernatural agents excite an ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... be proper to observe, that this remarkable preservation may be ascribed to the circumstance, that the entire surface of the stratum was incrusted with a layer of micaceous sandstone, adhering so firmly that it would not cleave off, thereby requiring the laborious and skilful application of the chisel. The appearance of this shining layer which is of a gray colour, while the fossil slab is a dark red, seems to carry the probability that it was washed or blown over the latter while in a state of loose sand, thus filling up the foot-prints and rain-drops, and preserving them unchanged ...
— The Rain Cloud - or, An Account of the Nature, Properties, Dangers and Uses of Rain • Anonymous
... who instructs the ingenious artisan, who teaches him to hew the stone, to chisel the marble, to mould gold, silver, copper, and iron; it is she who, under the fingers of the aged mother and the rose-cheeked daughter, makes the flax fine and elastic as the golden tresses ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... of the day on which he left the house, Mr. Lorry went into his room with a chopper, saw, chisel, and hammer, attended by Miss Pross carrying a light. There, with closed doors, and in a mysterious and guilty manner, Mr. Lorry hacked the shoemaker's bench to pieces, while Miss Pross held the candle as if ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... between the true thing and the counterfeit, and encouraged the one to go merrily on, while it sent back the other staggering. The secret lay chiefly in a hollow curve forward of nine or ten planks upon either side, which could only be compassed by skilful use of adze and chisel, frame-saw and small tools, after choice of the very best timber, free from knots, tough, and flexible. And the best judge of these points ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... of this huge carnivorous dinosaur were found in England nearly a century ago, and the descriptions by Dean Buckland and Sir Richard Owen and the restorations due to the imaginative chisel of Waterhouse Hawkins, have made it familiar to most English readers. Unfortunately it was, and still remains, very imperfectly known. It was very closely related to the American Allosaurus and unquestionably similar in ...
— Dinosaurs - With Special Reference to the American Museum Collections • William Diller Matthew
... meanwhile, was looking with concern upon his companion's grave face, whose flawless profile might have emerged into life under the thought-laden chisel of Lysippus. He wondered what he could say or do to drive away this melancholy. The youth had been so bright that day at the entertainment of the Duchess; he seemed to have stepped straight out of a sunny dialogue of Plato. Serious trouble now shone out of his ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... all means begin your folio; even if the doctor does not give you a year, even if he hesitates over a month, make one brave push and see what can be accomplished in a week.... For surely, at whatever age it overtake the man, this is to die young.... The noise of the mallet and chisel is scarcely quenched, the trumpets are hardly done blowing, when, trailing with him clouds of glory, this happy-starred, full-blooded spirit shoots into the ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... villages are never any thing more than these general carpenters, and never acquire any regular knowledge of their business. The real Russian plotniki seldom carries any other tools with him than an axe and a chisel, and with these he wanders through all parts of the empire, seeking, ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... the floor. He then jumped down, got a good grip of the heavy ear, carried it to the top of one of the slippery, polished bed-posts, seated himself comfortably, and, holding it well balanced, deliberately pried out one kernel at a time with his long chisel teeth, ate the soft, sweet germ, and dropped the hard part of the kernel. In this masterly way, working at high speed, he demolished several ears a day, and with a good warm bed in a box made himself at home and grew fat. Then naturally, ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... scout must be able to shoot and glue a four-foot straight joint, make a housing, tenon and mortise, and halved joint, grind and set a chisel and plane iron, make a 3 ft. by 1 ft. 6 in., by 1 ft. by 6 ft. dovetailed locked box, ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... person's sincerity as a Christian, or respectability as a man, or integrity as a judge, or courage and faithfulness as the often-tried representative of his political party. But, besides these cold, formal, and empty words of the chisel that inscribes, the voice that speaks, and the pen that writes, for the public eye and for distant time,—and which inevitably lose much of their truth and freedom by the fatal consciousness of so doing,—there were ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... a big chisel, to use as a lever, and between us we managed to twist the pedestal round and round, so as to afford a view of the statue from all points. Well, sir, it was perfectly charming, this girl's innocence and purity—-exhibiting her naked self, as it were, to a ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... beautiful. Among other parts of the said work are seen certain wings, acting as ornaments for a shell at the foot of the sarcophagus, which seem to be made not of marble but of feathers—difficult things to imitate in marble, seeing that the chisel is not able to counterfeit hair and feathers. There is a large shell of marble, more real than if it were an actual shell. There are also some children and some angels, executed with a beautiful and lively manner; and consummate excellence ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 3 (of 10), Filarete and Simone to Mantegna • Giorgio Vasari
... tip of iron, perhaps an inch square, mounted on a handle two feet long, and so shaped that the iron would do most of the cutting and scratching, and the handle acted merely as a wedge to assist the operation. I also saw a man making a knife by cutting a thick piece of iron with a cold chisel, afterward to be pounded out flat and ground down on stones. The entire operation would probably take about three or four weeks with the poor tools ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... bodeful trembling you gaze down into it, and see its weird traditions rise from its depth and hover over the pine-tops in the morning fog. Yet, Aasa was not dark; her hair was as fair and yellow as a wheat-field in August, her forehead high and clear, and her mouth and chin as if cut with a chisel; only her eyes were perhaps somewhat deeper than is common in the North, and the longer you looked at them the deeper they grew, just like the tarn, which, if you stare long enough into it, you will find is as deep ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... the stone-masons and watched closely every movement. One man was preparing a place for a large stone, while the other was chipping off the front edge with a sharp instrument called a cold chisel. ...
— Berties Home - or, the Way to be Happy • Madeline Leslie
... and thin and Mephistophelian, though not of the dark complexion which is commonly associated with Mephistopheles. His clean-shaven face got its marked character, not from its coloring but from its cut; Nature's chisel would seem to have been more freely used than her brush in this particular production. The face was long and thin and severe, the nose almost painfully sensitive, the mouth thin and firmly closed ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... No longer the canvas and the pigments, but the marble and the chisel. When the nights are calm and the moon full, I go out to gaze upon the wonderful purity of the moonlight and the snow. The air is full of latent fire, and the cold warms me—after a different fashion from that of the kitchen stove. The world ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... reality. He is tormented with the want of correspondence between things and thoughts. Michel Angelo's head is full of masculine and gigantic figures as gods walking, which make him savage until his furious chisel can render them into marble; and of architectural dreams, until a hundred stone-masons can lay them in courses of travertine. There is the like tempest in every good head in which some great benefit for the world is planted. The throes continue until the child is born. Every faculty new to each ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... chisel disposed of the resistance of the door in a few minutes. But some article of furniture had been placed against it inside, as a barricade. By pushing at the door, we thrust this obstacle aside, and so got admission to the room. The landlord entered first; the ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... naturally depends upon the quality of the soil; if rock is to be cut through, it is worked with a mason's axe and the cold chisel. Fortunately the geological formation is principally sedimentary limestone, which offers no great resistance. At length the water is reached. The well is now left open for a few days that an opinion may be formed ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... passengers, increased until it half filled the room, looking on in strained silence, or talking in whispers; the tall figure of the superintendent at the stove, busily stirring the kettle, and in the middle of the floor, the center of all eyes, the fourteen-year-old boy hurriedly working with chisel and hammer, seemingly only conscious of the task before him and the necessity of making the most ...
— The Young Railroaders - Tales of Adventure and Ingenuity • Francis Lovell Coombs
... correspond to the touches of the pencil or brush in drawing or painting, or to the strokes of the chisel in sculpture. The needle is the one implement of the craft by which endless forms of surface-work are executed. With a thread through its one eye, it blindly follows each effort of its pointed foot, urged by the intelligent or mechanical hand grouping the stitches, which, being long or short, single ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... some Chinese puzzle far beyond the grasp of his smooth, uncreased baby brain, Prince played in unfeigned delight with his problem: "Given the Universe, to explain the origin and permanence of Law," without any assistance from the exploded hypothesis of a law maker. Equipped with hammer, chisel, microscope, spectroscope and crucibles, he essayed the solution, undismayed by memories of his classics, of Sisyphus and Tantalus; seeing only the nodding poppies, the gilded primroses of ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... you would have imagined she had descended from a pedestal; the pose of her head was like that of the Greek Venus; her delicate, dilating nostrils seemed carved by a cunning chisel from transparent ivory. She had a startled, wild air, such as one sees in pictures of huntress nymphs. She used a naturally fine voice with great effect; and had already cultivated, so far as she ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... candles; somber-toned pictures and rusted armor lining the walls; the brilliant uniforms of the officers from Fort Louis, the laces and satins of the civilians; the flushed faces, some handsome, some sodden, some made hideous by the chisel and mallet of vice: all these produced a scene at once attractive ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... of the passage beyond, he could just make out the figure of Vera, who stood there with her finger on her lip as if imposing silence. He could see that in her hand she held something that looked like a chisel. A moment later she flitted away once more, leaving Gurdon to puzzle his brain as to what it ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White
... made an examination of the door which had been forced. It was evident that a chisel or strong knife had been thrust in, and the lock forced back with it. We could see the marks in the wood where it had been ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... flow of tasteful handwriting. "Allan Cunningham," observes the reviewer, "has raised himself like Hogg; but, instead of the plough, he has handled the chisel; and there is in his constitution an inherent love of the fine arts, which brings his thoughts into more grateful channels. We are well aware that there is a warmth and breadth of character about Cunningham which ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 478, Saturday, February 26, 1831 • Various
... frights in marble are as snug in their little squares, in front of their little halls, as are the majestic ruins in their poplar groves. In both instances, Nature and Circumstance have harmonised between the subject and the background. Come along. And let the rhymsters chisel on the monument whatever they like about sculptures and the wali. To condemn in this case is ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... explained. "It's the fifth stone from the chapel door under the little window with the Arden arms carved over it. There's no other window with that over it. I'll get the cold chisel." ...
— Harding's luck • E. [Edith] Nesbit
... when the millstones were being dressed, because the rumbling of the mill then stopped, and there were few pleasures I would not instantly forego, rushing at once to the mill, that I might spread out my hands near the mill-stones in the hope that the little hard flints flying form the miller's chisel would light upon their backs and make the longed-for marks. I used hotly to accuse the German miller, my dear friend Ferdinand, "of trying not to hit my hands," but he scornfully replied that he could ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... player goes out. The others decide on some workman to represent, each pretending to do some different task belonging to his employment. Thus, if they choose a carpenter, one will plane, one will saw, one will hammer, one will chisel, and so on. Their occupation has then to be guessed. It is perhaps more interesting if each player chooses a ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... could have produced a Zeuxis or Praxiteles. I cannot place Raphael on so exalted a pinnacle as Luther, or Bacon, or Newton, and yet his fame will last as long as civilization shall exist. The creations of the chisel will ever be held in reverence by mankind, and probably in proportion as wealth, elegance, and material prosperity shall flourish. In an important sense, Corinth was as wonderful as Athens, although to Athens will be assigned the highest ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... drew out an ugly knife and tried to force it between his lips like a lever or chisel. But Pinocchio as quick as lightning caught his hand with his teeth, and with one bite bit it clean off and spat it out. Imagine his astonishment when instead of a hand he perceived that he had spat a cat's paw on to ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... justice?" cried the Breton. "Justice, this is it!" and he advanced to the lawyer and the doctors, threatening them with his chisel. ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... produce; and conscious joy, And free selection, not the force of duty, Should impel me. Is it thus your Majesty Requires it? Could you suffer new creators In your own creation? Or could I Consent with patience to become the chisel, When I hoped to be the statuary? I love mankind; and in a monarchy, Myself is all that ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... cigar-case to Mayor Poundstone and continued lightly: "And I am glad to have your assurance that the city council will not drop a cold chisel in the cogs of ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... where the air is filled with the perfume of roses and violets and tame songbirds make their nests in the oleander bushes? Wouldst like to recline on soft downy cushions, allowing thy golden hair to fall over thy shoulders the while I, mallet or chisel in hand, would make thy face immortal by carving it in marble? The praefect saith thine is a case for pity, then do I have pity upon thee, and give thee the choice of what thy life shall be. Squalor ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... wilderness as the sculptor does his block, and body forth in imagination the glory hidden within. That which these may have faintly imagined stands before us palpable if not yet perfected, the amorphous veil of the shapely figure hewn away, and the long toil of drill and chisel only in too much ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... composition of the several parts, allowing the artist to dispense with all artificial supports, and to set his figures, with all their complex motions, and yet with plinths only three inches thick, into the basis of the gable; the bold use of the chisel, which wrought the shield, on the freely-held arm, down to a thickness of scarcely three inches; the fineness of the execution even in parts of the work invisible to an ordinary spectator, in the diligent finishing of which the only motive of the artist was ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... Goldini's Restaurant, Gloucester Road, Kensington. Please come at once and join me there. Bring with you a jemmy, a dark lantern, a chisel, and ...
— The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the blocks composing them. Some of the stones, of an oblong shape, are from ten to fifteen feet in length, and five or six feet thick. Their sides are quite smooth, but though square, and of pretty regular formation, they bear no mark of the chisel. They are laid together without cement, and here and there show gaps between. The topmost terrace and the lower one are somewhat peculiar in their construction. They have both a quadrangular depression in the centre, leaving the rest of the terrace elevated ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... bamboo knife-blade machine. It consists of about a dozen blades 8 or 10 inches in length, fastened together side by side with string. The blades lie one overlapping the other like the slats of an American window shutter. Each projecting blade is sharpened to a chisel edge. The machine is grasped in the hand, as shown in fig. 6, and is slid up and down the shaft with a slight twisting movement obtained by bending the wrist. The machine becomes ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... descend into the nave. The immense edifice seemed quite empty. The perpetual lamp burned before the altar, and wandering echoes thrilled in the upper galleries. Through a low-browed open door streamed across the aisle a flood of sunshine, and there was the sound of chisel and mallet from the same quarter, the stone-yard of the cathedral; but there was no visible worshipper—nothing to interrupt her ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... herbage; his nostril wide expanded, his lips slavering from intense excitement; his whole form motionless, and sharply drawn, and rigid, even to the straight stern and lifted foot, as a block wrought to mimic life by some skilful sculptor's chisel; and, scarce ten yards behind, his liver-colored comrade backs him—as firm, as stationary, as immovable, but in his attitude, how different! Chase feels the hot scent steaming up under his very nostril; feels it in every nerve, and quivers with anxiety ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... stupendous change, and turn a polygamous people into monogamists. But it is a well-known fact that the missionaries produce no more permanent effect on the Zulu mind than a child does on the granite rock which he chips at with a chisel. How many real Christians are there in Zululand and Natal, and of that select and saintly band how many practise monogamy? But very few, and among those few there is a large proportion of bad characters, men who have adopted Christianity as a last resource. I mean no disrespect to the missionaries, ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... endeavour to find out all their holes or places of retreat in the bank. This requires much practice and experience to accomplish, and is performed in the following manner:—Every man being furnished with an ice-chisel, lashes it to the end of a small staff about four to five feet long; he then walks along the edge of the banks, and keeps knocking his chisel against the ice. Those who are acquainted with that kind of work well know by the sound of the ice when ...
— Quadrupeds, What They Are and Where Found - A Book of Zoology for Boys • Mayne Reid
... at the captain of the steamer, regarding this submerged deposit, but he had never heard of it. There are, however, many such on the coasts of both Britain and Ireland. We staid at Oban for several hours, waiting the arrival of the Fort William steamer; and, taking out hammer and chisel from my bag, I stepped ashore to question my ancient acquaintance, the Old Red conglomerate, and was fortunate enough to meet on the pier-head, as I landed, one of the best of companions for assisting in such work, Mr. Colin Elder, of Isle Ornsay,—the gentleman who had so ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... Cano was with the pencil, he loved the chisel above all his other artistic implements. He was so fond of sculpture that, when wearied with painting, he would take his tools, and block out a piece of carving. A disciple one day remarking that to lay down a pencil and take ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... solid rock. Through these, according to tradition, there was nightly drawn a huge chain, secured by an immense padlock, for the protection of the haven and the armada which it contained. A ledge of rock had, by the assistance of the chisel and pickaxe, been formed into a sort of quay. The rock was of extremely hard consistence, and the task so difficult that, according to the fisherman, a labourer who wrought at the work might in the evening have carried home in his bonnet all the shivers which he had struck from the ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... in its marble demi-gods; the vivifying chisel of Phidias was thought worthy to typify the sublimity of Jupiter; the master-hand of Canova wrought the Parian block into the semblance of the sea-born goddess, giving to insensate stone the warmth ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 5, 1841 • Various
... would you be so good as to give me a bit of sopped bread to tie on my hand; it begins to burn and smart pretty badly. Just look, Mistress Miller, there's a Swedish dragoon's bullet in the side of the truck; if you would lend me a chisel or a pair of pincers, I could get it out, and take it home in ...
— The Young Carpenters of Freiberg - A Tale of the Thirty Years' War • Anonymous
... from his ship, sick, he first went to work and got well; then sallied out with chisel and plane, and made himself generally useful. A sober, steady man, it seems, he at last obtained the confidence of several chiefs, and soon filled them with all sorts of ideas concerning the alarming want of public spirit in the people of Imeeo. More especially did he dwell ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... was at hand, for he was the ticket agent and station master as well, and they soon signed for the box. Then they took it to a secluded corner of the station, and with a borrowed hammer and chisel pried ...
— The Rover Boys at College • Edward Stratemeyer
... Circular saw plates Automobile steel Coal auger steel Awl steel Coal mining pick or cutter steel Axe and hatchet steel Coal wedge steel Band knife steel Cone steel Band saw steel Crucible cast steel Butcher saw steel Crucible machinery steel Chisel steel Cutlery steel Chrome-nickel ...
— The Working of Steel - Annealing, Heat Treating and Hardening of Carbon and Alloy Steel • Fred H. Colvin
... ingeniously discover traces of the sculptor's hand where they do not exist. It is true, that, in some cases, the finishing touches are introduced by the artist himself; but I suspect that few who have accomplished and competent workmen give much of their time to the mallet or the chisel, preferring to occupy themselves with some new creation, or considering that these implements may be more advantageously wielded by those who devote themselves exclusively to their use. It is also true, that, although the process of transferring the statue from plaster to marble is reduced ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... were as statues rough-hewn at the quarry, and would have ripened to forms of majestic beauty, with brows like Jove and Minerva; with bosoms like Venus, cheeks like Ceres, and lips like Apollo, had the chisel of art but sculptured them out, rounded them off, and polished them down ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... comfort in a chisel! And such music in a file! I wish that little pocket-saws Would ...
— The Nursery, August 1873, Vol. XIV. No. 2 • Various
... rear their solitary heads like huge rocks from the waves, or are loosely piled one upon the other. The round form of many of the latter is especially remarkable: they almost seem to have been cut out with a chisel. ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... gardeners, and that, falling short of art, the landscape gardener too often works in the sphere of the artisan. There can be no rules for landscape gardening, any more than there can be for painting or sculpture. The operator may be taught how to hold the brush or strike the chisel or plant the tree, but he remains an operator; the art is intellectual and emotional and will not confine ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... wood with a chisel or gouge or whatever cutting tool may work well and fill the cavity with Portland cement in such a way as to exclude moisture. This will prolong the life and productiveness of the trees for many years ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... butchers are to be believed, the cow is a calf until there is no more room on her horn for rings. She seldom lives to be too old to be carved up with a buzz-saw and a cold-chisel and sold ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... the white, naked stems and branches had been scraped by fine teeth. When the sap starts in the early spring, the squirrels add this to their scanty supplies. They perforate the bark of the branches of the maples with their chisel-like teeth, and suck the sweet liquid as it slowly oozes out. It is not much as food, but ...
— Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers • John Burroughs
... temple was begun by the sons of Pandu, after "the great war," Mahabharata, and that after their death every true believer was bidden to continue the work according to his own notions. Thus the temple was gradually built during three centuries. Every one who wished to redeem his sins would bring his chisel and set to work. Many were the members of royal families, and even kings, who personally took ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... blizzard. Thumb's reputation as a "bad Injun" was well founded. The son of a hot-tempered French trader and a Cree mother, his early life had been a succession of merciless beatings. At the age of fourteen he killed his father with a blow from an ice chisel, and thereafter served ten years of an indeterminate sentence, during the course of which the unmerciful beatings were administered for each infraction of reformatory rules, until in his heart was born a sullen hatred of all white men and an abysmal hatred of the lash. When Wentworth struck, ...
— The Challenge of the North • James Hendryx
... as I listened to his pleasant voice I sensed much of the grim wonders he left untold. We visited X-ray rooms and operating theatre against whose walls were glass cases filled with a multitudinous array of instruments for the saving of life, and here it was I learned that in certain cases, a chisel, properly handled, was a far more delicate tool ...
— Great Britain at War • Jeffery Farnol
... away like a tool; but when it was flung away in the rain the tool rusted. But the comparison to a tool was insufficient for an awful reason that had already begun to dawn upon the master's mind. If you pick up a hammer, you do not find a whole family of nails clinging to it. If you fling away a chisel by the roadside, it does not litter and leave a lot of little chisels. But the meanest of the tools, Man, had still this strange privilege which God had given him, doubtless by mistake. Despite all ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... head, and say to him, that if he made any alarm that I should knock him down with the stone. But if he would be quiet he should not be hurt. I was then to take all the keys from him, and lock him up in the cell—take a chisel and cut the chain from my own leg, then unlock all the cells below, and let out the other prisoners, who were all to cut off their chains. We were then to go and let out old Stephen, and make him go off with us. We were to form a line and march to the front gate of the prison ...
— Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave, Written by Himself • Henry Bibb
... things was certain: either he was incapable of seeing below the surface, or in this particular case he was incapable of doing so. I could not decide until I had seen other work of his. To-day I know he is as capable with his chisel as Musgrave is with his brush. You have only to study the standing and crouching figures in the group to see how virile and full of insight he ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... whow, indeed, conveyed to them the idea not of their quality, but only of their use; for it is the same by which they distinguish a tool, commonly made of bone, which they use both as an auger and a chisel. However, their knowing that we had whow to sell was a proof that their connections extended as far north as Cape Kidnappers, which was distant no less than forty-five leagues; for that was the southermost ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... showing off works of art, told me that it has never been touched, and that its freshness is simply the quality of the stone), - the great feature is the ad- mirable choir, in the midst of which the three monu- ments have bloomed under the chisel, like exotic plants in a conservatory. I saw the place to small advantage, for the stained glass of the windows, which are fine, was under repair, and much of ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... his own unaided effort, however powerful, continuous, and wisely directed it may be, to cleanse himself utterly from his iniquity, is as hopeless as it would be for him to sit down with a hammer and a chisel and try by mechanical means to get all the iron out of a piece of ironstone. The union is chemical, not mechanical. And so hammers and chisels will only get a very little of the metal out. The one solvent is fire. Put the obstinate crude ore into your furnace, and get the temperature ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... ago, required some repair. The carpenter nailed a thick oaken plank upon the floor, about seven feet long, putting at least a dozen nails into it, each longer than his middle finger. At one end of this piece of wood, there was a small projection, and not having a proper chisel with him by which he might remove it, the man returned to his shop to fetch one. While he was absent, some persons came to see the animals; and the hyaena was let down by the keeper into the part of the den ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... is a large river, and in my time (1872-1875) was bridgeless, and had to be crossed in canoes, whilst the horses swam, or were towed behind the canoes with ropes. *4* Yapeyu was the largest of all the missions. The name signifies a chisel in Guarani. — ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... to get any leverage at all, it was necessary to chisel out a space between the first block to be moved and those that touched it, an operation which occupied two whole days. Masin worked doggedly and systematically, and Malipieri imitated him as well as he could, but more than once nearly blinded ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... with him, but his most vital sensation was one of glowing and passionate sympathy. They were splendid, these heroes who had seen the truth and had struggled to give life to it with pencil or brush or chisel, that others, too, might see and understand. If only one ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... to one of the number. No longer ghastly red, but almost marble white, with the hue of health yet mantling beneath the wondrous transparent skin, and every line and curve of beauty such as would make the sculptor drop his chisel in despair—with a lip that might have belonged to Juno and a brow that should have been set beneath the helmet of Athena—with the glorious dark eye fringed with long sweeping lashes and the wealth of the dark brown hair swept back in masses ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... points out) not to Saxon Edward, but to British Arthur, as their great ancestor. A gloomy porch conducts us into a blaze of splendour. Walls, ceilings, and arches are richly decorated; the "stone seems by the cunning labours of the chisel (says Washington Irving) to have been robbed of its weight and density, suspended aloft as if by magic." Nobody seems to be quite sure who was the architect of this beautiful piece of workmanship. The king lavished ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... his right hand through under the door, and felt something cold placed across his forefinger. Then there was a knock as of a mallet upon a chisel, and with a cry of anguish he drew in his hand streaming with blood. Jean had cut off his finger. Now, a man with a lame hand is of small account in the service, and so when the lieutenant came and saw Jack's condition he released him, with a round curse at having ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... he read, though not without difficulty, by the gleam of light which came in through the small opening which has been spoken of. From another pocket he produced two iron instruments carefully wrapped up, so as not to strike against each other. "Here is a strong chisel," he said, "and here is a stout file. I have heard of people working their way through prison walls with worse instruments than these. Now farewell, friend Moretz. The time I am allowed to remain with you is ended, and the ...
— The Woodcutter of Gutech • W.H.G. Kingston
... the organic differences of races can be obliterated by the education of the schools. The qualities of races are perpetuated by descent, and are the result of historical influences reaching far back into the generations of the past. An educated negro is a negro still. The cunning of the chisel of a Canova could not make an enduring Corinthian column out of a block of anthracite; not because of its color, but on account of the structure of its substance. He might indeed, with infinite pains, give it the form, but he could not impart to it the strength and adhesion of particles required ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... however, says Dr. Paris, readily discover, that the only chisel ever employed has been the tooth of time—the only artists engaged, the elements. Some years ago, the upper, or logging-stone, was thrown from its equilibrium by the bodily exertions of some sailors; but a general cry of indignation having been raised against this wanton act, it was shortly ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... the sense itself she cared little or nothing. And Greatorex, without even knowing what she was rough-hewn for, would take upon him to shape her ends!—an ambition the Divinity never permits to succeed: he who fancies himself the carver finds himself but the chisel, or indeed perhaps only the mallet, in the hand of ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... souls can have their chances to work, with the largest freedom and under the fewest disabilities, at the divine image stamped upon them,—to get here the tools, both temporal and spiritual, with which to strike poverty and misery out of those glorious traces, and to chisel deep and fresh the handwriting where God ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... where the utmost strength was aimed at. Inside, just behind the cutwater, the whole space was so traversed by cross-beams of oak that it almost became a solid mass, and outside the sharp stem was cased in iron so as to resemble a giant's chisel. The false keel was taken off, the whole vessel, in short, was rendered as strong, outside and in, as wood and iron and skill could make her. It need scarcely be said that all the other arrangements about her were made with the greatest ...
— Fast in the Ice - Adventures in the Polar Regions • R.M. Ballantyne
... malleable by annealing, and finally casehardened. Such parts are found to be quite as durable as if made of forged steel, and are, of course, less costly. As to the automatic tools now used in the construction of the machines, it may be said that scarcely a file, hammer, or chisel touches the frame or parts while they are being assembled to work together. The interchangeable system of construction is, of course, the only one possible for the accurate production of the millions of sewing machines ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 598, June 18, 1887 • Various
... risk with Maud. Of this fact he was soon assured; after which he took the precaution to conceal the pool of blood, by covering it with earth and stones. Making his other observations with care, and placing the saw and chisel, with the other tools, that had fallen from the captain's hand, when he received his death-wound, in a position to be handy, he ascended the path, and rejoined Maud. No word passed between our heroine and her guide. The latter motioned for her to ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... the field of poetry;—both Tasso and Milton, for example, having evinced so little tendency to such tastes[49], that, throughout the whole of their pages, there is not, I fear, one single allusion to any of those great masters of the pencil and chisel, whose works, nevertheless, both had seen. That Lord Byron, though despising the imposture and jargon with which the worship of the Arts is, like other worships, clogged and mystified, felt deeply, more especially in sculpture, whatever imaged forth true ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... on talkin' and the blacksmith was makin' a rod and he took it out of the forge and put it on the anvil and it sputtered sparks, and he pounded it around, and finally he took a chisel and cut off a piece, and I watched it grow from dull red till it got black and looked like a piece of licorice. So I went and picked it up. Gee! but it just cooked my fingers, and I yelled. "Thar's your lesson," ...
— Mitch Miller • Edgar Lee Masters
... with its complement of paddlers carved in wood and dressed in full costume; the latter executed with such singular fidelity of feature, that although the speaking figures sprung not from the experienced and classic chisel of the sculptor but from the rude scalping knife of the savage, the very tribe to which they belonged could be discovered at a glance by the European who was conversant with the features of each: then there were handsomely ornamented vessels made of the birch bark, ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... good," said the young fellow, as he handed me a long strip to taste. It was cool and sweet to the tongue, and on a hot day would undoubtedly quench thirst. The boy took it from the tree by means of a chisel-shaped iron after the heavy outer bark has been hewed away ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... would have followed them had she been allowed, to wander through the purple galleries, calling Charles. It was well she could not; for all Kaspar could do was to lower himself a hundred yards or so, chisel out a niche, and stand in it, smoking his honest pipe to pass the time, and trying to fancy he could hear the murmur of the waters down below. Meantime Mrs. Knollys strained her eyes, peering downward from above, leaning ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various
... stared, their faces failed to harden as they had always hardened before, whenever they rebuked her slim, elfish untidiness, for upon the face of stone, which was the face of his wife, John Anderson's chisel had left a fleeting, poignantly wistful smile that seemed touched with the glory ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... rough particles must positively be removed with chisel and hammer and with a free application of emery cloth and wire brush. The metal exposed to the welding flame should be perfectly clean and bright all over, or else the additional material will not unite, but will ...
— Oxy-Acetylene Welding and Cutting • Harold P. Manly
... from a bas-relief by Michelangelo, and as we examine it closely we discover that the sculptor's work was left unfinished. The rough marks of the chisel are still seen on the surface of the marble. A child's figure in the background is quite indistinct. Probably it was intended for the boy St. John the Baptist, the cousin of Jesus. The child Jesus himself is by no means completed; his right arm is ...
— Michelangelo - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Master, With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... delicately and as clearly outlined, as if cut with an engraver's chisel from hard metal; but pallid, bloodless, untinged by the faintest trace of color. The long, silver-white beard of the tall venerable painter flowed in thick waves over his breast, and the eyes, with which ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... answers. And she does not mean either the house at Sciennes or the Kirkpatrick mansion near the Water of Leith. She is thinking of that once open space by the Greyfriars where, to the accompaniment of keen chisel-stroke and dull mallet-thud, once on a day she came to me, more dream-like than my dream, and said, "I have found ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... but always mastered that fortune, and never allowed the fortune to master him? What is a monument of Aberdeen granite beside a monument of intellect and souls? What is an epitaph of a few words cut by a sculptor's chisel beside the epitaph of coming generations and hundreds writing his praise? Beautiful and adorned beyond all the crypts and catacombs and shrines of the dead! But the superfluous and inexcusable expense of catafalque and sarcophagus and tumulus ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... having stood two or three weeks longer than is necessary for cigar leaf, it is ready to cut. This is done with a knife made for the purpose. It resembles a wide chisel, except that the handle and chisel are at right angles. Before cutting, the stalk is split down through the center. Being ripe, it splits before the knife, and following the grain the leaves escape unharmed. This splitting is ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... substance like damp sawdust. He seemed puzzled for a moment what to do with it. Finally he took it out and scattered it along the grass-grown slope of a railway cutting. Then he returned to his tool chest, took out a chisel and grimly felt its edge with ...
— The Face And The Mask • Robert Barr
... shaft of the spear is a sumpit or blow-pipe. This is a small wooden tube about eight feet long. The smoothness and straightness of the bore is remarkable. The hole is drilled with an iron rod, one end of which is chisel-pointed, through a log of hard wood, which is afterwards pared down and rounded till it is ...
— Children of Borneo • Edwin Herbert Gomes
... a bunch of keys, but none of them would fit the little English lock. Then my gentleman takes out of his pocket a chisel and hammer, and falls to work like a professional burglar, actually ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... beyond the grave, and to snatch as much as we can from oblivion—such is our natural love of immortality; but it is here that letters obtain the noblest triumphs; it is here that the swarthy daughters of Cadmus may hang their trophies on high; for when all the pride of the chisel and the pomp of heraldry yield to the silent touches of time, a single line, a half-worn-out inscription, remain faithful to their trust. Blest be the man that first introduced these strangers into ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... and he learned the lore of the fields and the woods. Walking one day by the sea, he picked up the backbone of a great fish, and from it he invented the saw. Seeing how a certain bird carved holes in the trunks of trees, he learned how to make and use the chisel. Then he invented the wheel which potters use in molding clay; and he made of a forked stick the first pair of compasses for drawing circles; and he studied out many ...
— Old Greek Stories • James Baldwin
... regards certain work that would have to be done with the aid of our organic resources alone, we are superior to all as soon as we set our tools at work. If the rodents with their sharp teeth cut wood better than we can, we do it still better with the ax, the chisel, the saw. Some birds, with the help of a strong beak, by repeated blows, penetrate the trunk of a tree: but the auger, the gimlet, the wimble do the same work better and more quickly. The knife is superior to the carnivore's ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... are so transported, you will persuade yourself the statue lives.' 'O, sweet Paulina,' said Leontes, 'make me think so twenty years together! Still methinks there is an air comes from her. What fine chisel could ever yet cut breath? Let no man mock me, for I will kiss her.' 'Good my lord, forbear!' said Paulina. 'The ruddiness upon her lip is wet; you will stain your own with oily painting. Shall I draw the curtain?' 'No, not ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... to have been designed by nature to rule, to see slaves at her feet, to provide occupation for the painter's brush, the sculptor's chisel and the poet's pen, lived the life of a rare and beautiful flower, which is shut up in a hot house, for she sat the whole day long wrapped up in her costly fur jacket and looked down ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... but the sites selected for them, revealed the thought which they represented, according as the symbol to be expressed was graceful or grave. Greece crowned her mountains with a temple harmonious to the eye; India disembowelled hers, to chisel therein those monstrous subterranean pagodas, borne up by gigantic ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... of Professor Walker, "Not far from the three cairns is the so called 'Caiy-stone' of Maitland and Whyte. It has always, however (he maintains), been known among the people of the country by the name of the Ket-stane." It is of whinstone, and "appears not to have had the chisel, or any inscription upon it." "The craig (he adds) or steep rocky mountain which forms the northern extremity of the Pentland Hills, and makes a conspicuous figure at Edinburgh, hangs over this field of battle. It is called Caer-Ketan Craig. ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... winter, which is the 'hunting season,' they do their best to force our houses with heavy weapons, and if we take to the water beneath the ice, and swim to our tunnels in the river side, they sound the ice above the banks with an iron chisel, which tells their practised ears the exact spot where our holes are to be found. Then they dig us out—and that is ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... said, in speaking of Don Giovanni, "in the sacred earth of Hellene we find a fragment, an arm, the debris of a torso, scratched and damaged by the ravages of time; it is only the shadow of the god that the sculptor's chisel once created; but the charm is somehow still there, the sublime style is radiant in ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... he talked one night to me of the spiritual way in which marble, so soft and yet so firm, answered like living material to his tool, sending flame into it, and then seemed, as with a voice, to welcome the emotion which, flowing from him through the chisel, passed into the stone. ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... Tibetans smelt and cast the ore when sufficient fuel is obtainable for the purpose. Earthen crucibles are employed to liquefy the metals, and the castings are made in clay moulds. For the inlaid work, in which the Tibetans greatly excel, they use hammer and chisel. Inlaid ornamentation is frequently to be seen on the sheaths of Tibetan swords, the leaf pattern, varied scrolls and geometrical combinations being most commonly preferred. The process of hardening metals is still in its infancy, and Tibetan blades are of wrought-iron, and ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... Mason-bee's nests. The pebbles in the waste-lands supply me with plenty of buildings of the Chalicodoma of the Walls; the byres scattered here and there in the fields give me, under their dilapidated roofs, in fragments broken off with the chisel, the edifices of the Chalicodoma of the Sheds. I am anxious not to complete the destruction of my home hives, already so sorely tried by my experiments; they have taught me much and can teach me more. Alien colonies, picked up more ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... CHISEL and HAMMER to get the clingers, spatula for frail limpets. You may find other hardware handy, ...
— Let's collect rocks & shells • Shell Oil Company
... introduced himself to me as a socialist. "I don't believe like Marx," he said, "that labour produces everything, but I maintain that the task-work of the employed and directed labourer, of whatever grade—whether he uses a pen or a chisel—is always worth more than the wages which the employers pay him for performing it. I feel this myself with regard to my own firm. Month by month I am worth to it more than the sums it gives me. This," ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock |
