"Fence" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... went abroad in the town, and he was challenged to a bout by the principal teacher of the art in Chicago. Ellsworth records the combat in his diary of May 24th: "This evening the fencer of whom I have heard so much came up to the armory to fence with me. He said to his pupils and several others that if I held to the low guard he would disarm me every time I raised my foil. He is a great gymnast, and I fully expected to be beaten. The result ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various
... toward the dust they must shortly return to; whose skin seems already drest into parchment, and their bones already dried to a skeleton; these shadows of men shall be wonderful ambitious of living longer, and therefore fence off the attacks of death with all imaginable sleights and impostures; one shall new dye his grey hairs, for fear their colour should betray his age; another shall spruce himself up in a light periwig; a third shall repair the loss of his teeth with an ivory set; and a fourth perhaps ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... him I must speak openly. He is my friend. I cannot fence with him. I have never fenced with him in my own affairs." She moved as though she were going away from the fireplace, then she turned and said: "Have you thought of what love is between a man and a woman when it means marriage? That long, long life together, day after day, stripped of all romance ...
— Dream Life and Real Life • Olive Schreiner
... discovered that the peacocks were creatures of yew-tree, perched at either end of the garden fence. Mr. Clare had found them there, and ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... traveller stopped at its door. A miserable horse, whose ribs were as articulate as the bars of a gridiron, stalked about a field where a thin carpet of moss, scarcely covering the ragged beds of pudding-stone, tantalized and balked his hunger; and sometimes he would lean his head over the fence, looked piteously at the passer-by, and seem to petition deliverance from this land ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... not be waked (liquor was his great weakness), was placed in a peasant-cart, together with his kazak cap and his dagger, and sent off to the town, five-and-twenty versts distant,—and there was found under a fence.... Well, and Timofei, who still kept his feet and merely hiccoughed, was "pitched out neck and crop," as a matter of course. The master had made a failure of his attempt. So they might as well let the servant ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... (At least so seeming) to the things we have passed, Resembling somewhat the wild habitants Of the deep woods of earth, the hugest which Roar nightly in the forest, but ten-fold In magnitude and terror; taller than The cherub-guarded walls of Eden—with Eyes flashing like the fiery swords which fence them— 140 And tusks projecting like the trees stripped of Their bark and ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... Mount Caucasus; and their separation, which diminished the importance, must have multiplied the number, of their rustic capitals. In the present state of Mingrelia, a village is an assemblage of huts within a wooden fence; the fortresses are seated in the depths of forests; the princely town of Cyta, or Cotatis, consists of two hundred houses, and a stone edifice appertains only to the magnificence of kings. Twelve ships from Constantinople, and about sixty barks, laden ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... subtle tongue alone; and (as a fighter myself) I did not like Phorenice the less for the knowledge. I could but see her out of the corner of my eye, and that only now and again, for the fishers, despite their ill-knowledge of fence, and the clumsiness of their weapons, had heavy numbers, and most savage ferocity; and as they made so confident of being able to pull us down, it required more than a little hard battling to keep them from doing it. ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... to the cabin they found Mrs. Mary Brady sitting in the doorway, the child playing on the ground—beaten hard by years of wear—in front of her. She arose as they appeared, and the boy darted off into the fenced garden farther to the south, looking back with a grin from behind the stake-and-rider fence. ...
— The Boy Scout Camera Club - The Confession of a Photograph • G. Harvey Ralphson
... Templar, coolly—"Lives as yet; but had he worn the bull's head of which he bears the name, [Footnote: Front-de-Boeuf means Bull's Head.] and ten plates of iron to fence it withal, he must have gone down before yonder fatal axe. Yet a few hours, and Front-de- Boeuf is with his fathers—a powerful limb lopped off Prince John's enterprise." [Footnote: Prince John was scheming to usurp the throne of England while King Richard, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... crossed by a fence containing a small strip of land for the purpose of raising early summer vegetables. Here now is erected the splendid dwelling house of one of the wealthiest citizens of the village, and the garden is converted into front yard, building spot and back yard, containing ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... clearing and the woods to the main road which led to the river. He did the talking, while she answered yes or no, with a sound of tears in her voice. When they reached the highway they stopped by the sunken grave, and leaning against the fence which inclosed it, Eudora removed her sunbonnet, letting the moon shine upon her face, as it had done when she sat in the clearing. It was very white but there were no tears now in her eyes. She was forcing them back and she tried to smile as she said, "You are very kind, and I think I understand ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... much farther, when, just as they approached the paling of a paddock, a horse which had been turned in to graze, came blundering over the fence, and would presently have been ranging the world. Unaccustomed to horses, except when equipped and held ready by the hand of a groom, the ladies and children started and drew back. Vavasor also stepped a little aside, making way for the animal to follow his own ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... Swinging thus by her arms, she succeeded in placing one of her feet against the body of the tree, and thus partly supported herself, and relieved in some degree the painful weight upon her wrists. He threw down his whip—took a rail from the garden fence, ordered her feet to be tied together, and thrust the rail between them. He then ordered one of the hands to sit upon it. Her back at this time was bare, but the strings of the only garment which she wore passed over her shoulders and prevented the full force of ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... swiftly with head averted. She had passed nearly to the next building before she stopped and wheeled around defiantly. "I ain't afraid to look," she said to herself and gazed across at Grit's junk-cart, with its string of bells, partly concealed back against the fence. It was standing in the shadow, silent, unmanned. She walked on for a few steps and turned again. The cart was standing as before, silent, unmanned. She stood there, hands on her hips, trying to visualize Grit drooping over the handle—his collarless neck, his grimy face ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... Singeth to me on fence and tree; The snow sails round him, as he sings, White as the down ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... down!" a man's voice cried. "It is the edge of a gravel pit. The fence will not bear. There is a sheer drop ...
— The Crooked House • Brandon Fleming
... in Israel—climbed on the fence, clapped her hands, shouted for joy, and "bressed de Lord dat dar was de ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... evidently had no affection for her. She told us that we need have no fear about canoes, as her husband had three or four which were hauled up on the bank inside a yard, close to which we then were, and that by climbing over the fence we should find them at any time ready for use. As to paddles, she acknowledged that they were generally kept shut up in the house, to prevent the canoes being taken away, but that she would try and place them on board the following evening ...
— The Two Supercargoes - Adventures in Savage Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... to have, day after day, old names translated for me into new facts. Pleasant, at least to me: not so pleasant, I fear, to my kind companions, whose courtesy I taxed to the uttermost by stopping to look over every fence, and ask, 'What is that? And that?' Let the reader who has a taste for the beautiful as well as the useful in horticulture, do the same, and look in fancy over the hedge of ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... the house was hardly visible from the valley road. A traveller would never have noticed it, and even the keen eye of an Indian might have failed to discover it. The singular fence that surrounded it hid it from view,—singular to the eye of one unaccustomed to the vegetation of this far land, it was a fence of columnar cacti. The plants that formed it were regular fluted columns, six inches thick and from six to ten feet ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... devised for fishing, and some had brought their shields. We passed seven traps, in Kenyah called "bring," some in course of making, and others already finished. These rapidly made structures were found at different points on the river. Each consisted of a fence of slightly leaning poles, sometimes fortified with mats, running across the river and interrupted in the middle by a well-constructed trough, the bottom of which was made from poles put closely together, which allowed the water to escape ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... the place behind the shed where she had used to hide from Roddy's persecutions, and here the border of herbaceous perennials under whose stems was fairyland. The back of the house had been the Alps for climbing, and the shrubs in front of it a Terai. The knots and broken pale that made the garden-fence scalable, and gave access to the fields behind, were still to be traced. And here against a wall were the plum-trees. In spite of God and wasps and her father, she had stolen plums; and once because of discovered ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... which there were, I believe, one or two small, old buildings, perhaps negro houses. Just before reaching the open field we turned off to the right and came in on the right hand side of the field, and lay down behind the rail fence. While in this situation, a general officer came up and had a talk with Barlow. From what I heard at the time and have since read, I am of the opinion it was Gen. Kearney. I heard him say, "Colonel, you will place your men across that road, and hold ...
— Personal Recollections of the War of 1861 • Charles Augustus Fuller
... retreated towards the garden fence, the dog still following him up. He had tried coaxing and conciliation, and they had failed. As he cautiously backed from the house, his feet struck against a heavy cart stake, which seemed to suggest his next resort. He was well aware that any quick movement ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic
... way home along the unsteady turnpike—upon which he is sure there will be a dreadful accident some day, for want of railings—is suddenly brought to an unsettled pause in his career by the spectacle of Old Mortarity leaning against the low fence of the pauper burial-ground, with a shapeless boy throwing stones at him in the moonlight. The stones seem never to hit the venerable JOHN MCLAUGHLIN, and at each miss the spry monkey of the moonlight sings "Sold again," and casts another ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 13, June 25, 1870 • Various
... his character. Moreover, he noted that the prisoner, who averred that he was born in Biscay, knew only a few words of the Basque language, and used these quite wrongly. He heard later another witness who deposed that the original Martin Guerre was a good wrestler and skilled in the art of fence, whereas the prisoner, having wished to try what he could do, showed no skill whatever. Finally, a shoemaker was interrogated, and his evidence was not the least damning. Martin Guerre, he declared, required twelve holes ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... instance, is a "statement showing the decrease in price in the United States of many articles within the past ten years largely consumed by the agricultural community." And among these "many articles" "largely consumed," are "mowing machines, barb fence-wire, horseshoes, forks, wire-cloth, slop-buckets, wheelbarrows, and putty." No wonder dyspepsia is the national disease in America. Fancy "consuming" French staples, pie-plates (though they sound ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., October 11, 1890 • Various
... is what it is," she said, as she tied her muffler closer about her neck, and sought shelter from the cold wind behind the high board fence. "All of us girls must meet as often as we can, during the coming week, to make aprons and neckties out of print. Only one apron and one necktie is to be alike, and Walt Haley and Mr. Dilloway are going to give us as much calico as ...
— A District Messenger Boy and a Necktie Party • James Otis
... calf or cow invaded the garden of one of the farmers, the other willingly drove it away, saying: "Be careful, neighbor, that your stock does not again stray into my garden; we should put a fence up." In the same way they had no secrets from each other. The doors of their houses and barns had neither bolts nor locks, so sure were they of each other's honesty. Not a shadow of ...
— The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... while the jackal was eating, Anuwa knocked him head over heels with his stick; and the jackal got up and fled, threatening and cursing Anuwa. Among other things the jackal as he ran away, had threatened to eat Anuwa's malhan plants, so Anuwa put a fence of thorns round them and when the jackal came at night and tried to eat the pods he only got his ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... are rife here. One pioneer told us, that, when a fence is to be made and post-holes are wanted, it is only necessary to drop beet-seed ten feet apart all around the field, and, when the beet is ripe, you pull it up and your post-hole is ready! To be sure, there was a twinkle in the corner of his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... the nonchalant, offhand manner with which the sighting was written off by the Air Force public relations officer showed great confidence in the conclusion, Venus, but behind the barbed-wire fence that encircled ATIC the nonchalant attitude didn't exist among the intelligence analysts. One man had already left for Louisville and the rest were doing some tall speculating. The story about the tower-to-air talk. "It looks metallic and it's tremendous in size," spread ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... having gone to Powhatan's village, all understood that it would have been wiser had they listened to my master when he counseled them to take exercise at arms, and straightway all the men were set about making a fort with a palisade, which last is the name for a fence built of logs set on end, side by side, in the ground, and rising so high that the enemy may not climb over it. This work took all the time of the laborers until the summer was gone, and in the meanwhile the ...
— Richard of Jamestown - A Story of the Virginia Colony • James Otis
... to get 'erself out of nothin'; 'cos she's so bad that she don't keer whort rows she gets inter. But she tells other sorts. She just sits up on the fence what goes roun' the green, an' mikes up things, an' a lot of the children ain't got no more sense than to sit roun' an' listen to 'er. That just mikes 'er worse. She sits theer, a-tellin' stories, an' sweerin' they're all true. You never 'eard ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 7, 1891 • Various
... when we had just crossed a fence bounding what appeared to be an avenue of the town, "close up on the right." The Captain partly turned, to repeat the command to his men, when the bullets from a sudden flash of waving fire that for the instant lit up the summit of the stone wall for its ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong
... Gnash teeth that could not fasten on her flesh, And foam his life out in dark froth of blood Vain as a wind's waif of the loud-mouthed sea Torn from the wave's edge whitening. Tell him this; Though thrice his might were mustered for our scathe 730 And thicker set with fence of thorn-edged spears Than sands are whirled about the wintering beach When storms have swoln the rivers, and their blasts Have breached the broad sea-banks with stress of sea, That waves of inland and the main make war As men that mix and grapple; though his ranks Were more to number than all ...
— Erechtheus - A Tragedy (New Edition) • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... big red barns of the middle west fly by, their dull respectability, their commonplace prosperity vaguely depressed him. What if he should be sentenced for life to walk up to his front door between two rows of whitewashed rocks, to live surrounded by a picket fence, and to die behind a pair of neat green blinds? But mostly his thoughts were a jumble of Sprudell, of his insincere cordiality and the unexpected denouement when Abe Cone's call had forced his hand; of Dill and his mission, and disgust at ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... was close on one side of the castle garden, and separated from it only by a high wall. A very pretty little toll-house with a red-tiled roof stood near, with a gay little flower-garden inclosed by a picket-fence behind it. A breach in the wall connected this garden with the most secluded and shady part of the castle garden itself. The toll-gate keeper who occupied the cottage died suddenly, and early one morning, when I was still sound asleep, the Secretary from the castle waked me ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... was on the marshy ground between the walls and the Isis, on land bestowed upon them in charity, amongst the huts of the poor whom they loved. At first huts of mud and timber, as rough and rude as those around, arose within the fence and ditch which they drew and dug around their habitations, but the necessities of the climate had driven them to build in stone, for the damp climate, the mists and fogs from the Isis, soon rotted away their woodwork. And so Martin found a very ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... a glen or a waterfall for one man's exclusive enjoying; to fence out a genial eye from any corner of the earth which nature has lovingly touched; to lock up trees and glades shady paths and haunts along rivulets, would be an embezzlement by one man of God's ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... he said, "at a fencing-school in Milan, where half a dozen French gentlemen met half a dozen gentlemen of my nationality in a match to test the merits of the French and Italian methods of fence. This Lagardere of yours was the only one whom I had ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... along the dear old paths to our little cottage, but "Desolate was the dwelling of Morna"—the house closed, the vine torn down, the grass knee-deep, the shrubs all trailing their branches and blossoms in disorderly luxuriance on the earth, the wire fence broken down between the garden and the wood, the gate gone; the lawn was sown with wheat, and the little pine wood one tangled maze, without path, entrance, or issue. I ran up the mound to where John used to stand challenging the ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... might have been expected from one of the craft. Indeed, the man's carelessness in going straight across the country to his brother's house, and leaving footsteps in the soft earth, easily traceable almost to the very boundary fence, shows he is incapable of any ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... south, the eastern, western, and northern districts of England were cut off from the centre by natural barriers. The Fens of Cambridgeshire and the marshes of the Lea valley, together with the dense forest along the "East Anglian" range, enclosed the east in a ring fence; within which yet another belt of woodland divided the Trinobantes of Essex from the Iceni of Norfolk and Suffolk. The Severn and the Dee isolated what is now Wales, a region falling naturally into two sub-divisions; South Wales ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... going "down South," in order to inspire terror. Going to Georgia meant to pass on into a land without hope, of darkness and death. Occasionally a hard-featured stranger would appear on the scene, and, while leaning on the fence with folded arms, he would watch the boys at play in the yard with the interested glances of a trader. Then, as must have appeared mysteriously to the boys themselves, after the stranger had gone ...
— From Slave to College President - Being the Life Story of Booker T. Washington • Godfrey Holden Pike
... divided into two by a fence, the lower part consisting in the main of a large, steaming midden, crossed by planks in various directions, and at the top a few inverted wheelbarrows. A couple of pigs lay half buried in the manure, asleep, and a busy flock of hens were eagerly scattering the pile ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... Discourses of L. Bacon," pp. 29-32. "The greatest and boldest improvement which has been made in criminal jurisprudence by any one act since the dark ages was that which was made by our fathers when they determined 'that the judicial laws of God, as they were delivered by Moses, and as they are a fence to the moral law, being neither typical nor ceremonial nor having any reference to Canaan, shall be accounted of moral equity, and generally bind all offenders and be a rule to all ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... was, to discover where the gate and bridge, for passing through the railing and over the canal, might be; since as yet I had not been able to find any thing of the kind. I therefore watched the golden fence very narrowly as we hastened towards it. But in a moment my sight failed: lances, spears, halberds, and partisans began unexpectedly to rattle and quiver; and the strange movement ended in all the points sinking towards each other just as if two ancient hosts, armed with pikes, were ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... neighbors to the Coffin homestead were Eliakim Walker, Nathaniel Atkinson and David Flanders, all of whom were at Bunker Hill—Walker in the redoubt under Prescott; Atkinson and Flanders in Captain Abbott's company, under Stark, by the rail fence, ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1 • Various
... De l'Isle across to her beautiful gates, and Chester, not in dream but in fact, with M. De l'Isle and Mme. Alexandre following well in the rear, walked with mademoiselle to the high fence and green batten wicket of her olive-scented garden in the rue Bourbon. So walking, and urged by him, she began to tell of matters in her father's life, the old Hotel St. Louis life before hers began—matters that gave to "The Clock in the Sky" and "The Angel of the Lord" a ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable
... a fence may be, it will not keep out, or keep in, smells. Therefore when Petherton engaged in apparently chemical operations giving off the most noxious gases I was rapidly forced to the conclusion that he ought to have a different kind of boundary between his property ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 1, 1916 • Various
... kind of right-whale; they get barnacles and a kind of marine lice on their backs, and come up and scratch them selves against a ship's keel, just like a hog under a fence." ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... to prepare the supper, repaired to the place of public prayer. It was easy for them to find it, as the swarm of all Omdurman was bound thither. The place was spacious, encircled partly by a thorny fence and partly by a clay enclosure which was being built. In the center stood a wooden platform. The prophet ascended it whenever he desired to instruct the people. In front of the platform were spread upon ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... make a bit of a shelter and a tiny fire, and linger over it till the hot sun comes out, and then forget the cold. The old people here never even built a hut, Nic—only a shelter— a rough bit of fence." ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... zeriba on the west and the Bengalese retreated on them from the east, the Billy Bagshot detachment of Berkshires rallying them and firing steadily, the enemy swarming after and stampeding the mules and camels. Over the low bush fence, over the unfinished sand-bag parapet at the southwest salient, spread the shrieking enemy like ants, stabbing and cutting. The Gardner guns, as Connor had said, were "fer the inimy," but the Lushai ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... these times of war every patriot must do his part. His part was to help rid the country of these Reds, and he must not flinch. They made their way to the old building in which the I. W. W. headquarters were located, and Peter climbed up on the fence and swung over to the fire-escape, and Nell very carefully handed the suit-case to him, and Peter opened the damaged window and slipped ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... gallop together through miles of country, the farmers and servants tipping and staring after her as she laid her silver-handled whip upon her pony. She knew not the meaning of fear, and would take a fence or a ditch that a man might pause at. And so I fell into the habit of leading her the easy way round, for dread ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... or the "long-neck" stings, While the big beam tilts, or the last bell rings, While horses are horses to train and to race, Then women and wine take a second place For me—for me— While a short "ten-three" Has a field to squander or fence to face! ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... run on home, while I stop and see what she wants," she said, turning from them and passing through the little gateway in a neat white paling fence at her side. Then she followed the path to the door, as usual near the rear of the cottage, but here prettily shaded by a neat latticed porch, over which some vines, now bare of leaves, clambered, while a little bay-window close by was all abloom with ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... has a cultivated garden that keeps his gardener pretty busy. But the wild-flower garden along the rambling old north fence the colonel tends himself. In June it is a hedge of lovely wild roses followed a little later by masses of purple phlox. Then come the meadow lilies and the painted cup and so on, until in late October you can not see the old fence for the ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... noon. Ligarius was returning from the Campus Martius. He strolled through one of the streets which led to the Forum, settling his gown, and calculating the odds on the gladiators who were to fence at the approaching Saturnalia. While thus occupied, he overtook Flaminius, who, with a heavy step and a melancholy face, was sauntering in the same direction. The light-hearted young man plucked him ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Romulus, where the course of the chariots, the stations of the judges, competitors, and spectators, are yet as plainly to be seen as in old time: past the tomb of Cecilia Metella: past all inclosure, hedge, or stake, wall or fence: away upon the open Campagna, where on that side of Rome, nothing is to be beheld but Ruin. Except where the distant Apennines bound the view upon the left, the whole wide prospect is one field of ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... was smaller, less commodious and less substantial—the cabins erected in the western states by the first settlers. To my child's eye, however, it was a noble structure, admirably adapted to promote the comforts and conveniences of its inmates. A few rough, Virginia fence-rails, flung loosely over the rafters above, answered the triple purpose of floors, ceilings, and bedsteads. To be sure, this upper apartment was reached only by a ladder—but what in the world for climbing could be better than a ladder? To me, this ladder was really a ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... James remained a prisoner. But although a prisoner he was not harshly treated, and the Kings of England took care that he should receive an education worthy of a prince. James was taught to read and write English, French, and Latin. He was taught to fence and wrestle, and indeed to do everything as a knight should. Prince James was a willing pupil; he loved his books, and looked forward to the coming of his teachers, who lightened ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... interspersed with these are deciduous trees of every kind, to make a fantastic tracery of bare branches against the wintry sky and furnish a series of beautiful contrasts, from the earliest tender bud to the last sere autumn leaf. And the ferns! Did the Great Artist have any left after planting the fence-corners, roadsides and deep woods of Peterboro? Overarch these features with a fair dome of fleece-scattered blue and waft abroad throughout the place a succession of mountain breezes, ozone charged, and you have a place to live and ...
— Edward MacDowell • Elizabeth Fry Page
... his story of what had happened. He said that when he got to Riversbrook there was a light in the library and he got over the fence and hid himself in the garden. Then he noticed that there was a light in the hall and that the hall door was open. He thought Sir Horace had left it open by mistake, and he was going to creep into the house and hide himself there till after Sir Horace ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... relief softened the woman's haggard features. Then her face darkened again and she pointed at two barefooted children shrinking against the fence. ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... Man, if you want me to show you the road to Butterfield." She climbed the fence into the ten-acre lot and he followed her, walking slowly and stumbling over the little hillocks in the pasture as if he was thinking of something else ...
— The Road to Oz • L. Frank Baum
... fence composed of a beam or a bar armed with long spikes, literally Friesland horses, having been first used ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... She's there now. You'll see her at dinner time. She sticks to Clinch. He's a rat. He's up against the dry laws and the game laws. Government enforcement agents, game protectors, State Constabulary, all keep an eye on Clinch. Harrod's trespass signs fence him in. He's like a rat in a trap. Yet Clinch makes money at law breaking and ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... fellow of about his own age, dressed in extreme negligee, sleeves rolled up, shirt open, face and throat brown like the brown of autumn. It seemed to make things easier for the trio that Tom vaulted up onto the bookkeeper's high desk, as if he were vaulting a fence, and sat there swinging his legs, the very embodiment of ...
— Tom Slade's Double Dare • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... mosses and the like, growing on the barks of trees, fence boards, and low ground, spread slowly in ...
— Seed Dispersal • William J. Beal
... or paused, the black Canal, Edged by the timber piles so black and tall. From the rotten fence I watched the horses pull Along the footpath, slow and beautiful, Moving with strength and ease, in their great size And untired movement wonderful to my eyes; Their dull brass clanking as each shaggy foot ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman
... flies—varied with cherries, apples, figs, berries and green corn. Acorns form its principal food during the greater portion of the year. Of these it stores away large numbers in the thick bark of pines, in partly rotten limbs of oak trees, telegraph poles, and fence posts. A writer in the "Auk" says of its habits: "It is essentially a bird of the pines, only occasionally descending to the cotton woods of low valleys. The oaks, which are scattered through the lower pine zone, supply a large ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [April, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... in his fence row, uncultivated and surrounded by bushes of every kind, a small seedling walnut that he grafted this year with the Stabler walnut. When he grafted the seedling it was a little over an inch in diameter. ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Seventh Annual Meeting • Various
... of course, right down to the cleated shoes. But even at that the grass is so sleek that the footing's as treacherous as a polished ball room floor. On his first try, "Rus" slips and falls flat before he gets to the ball and the pigskin rolls to the fence. ...
— Interference and Other Football Stories • Harold M. Sherman
... he told his uncles to get to work building three stockades with ditches between and make the ditches wide and deep so they will hold plenty of buffalo. "The fourth fence I will build ...
— Myths and Legends of the Sioux • Marie L. McLaughlin
... sudden turn of Cecily's head. A moment's silence followed. He came up to her, holding out his hand. She drew back, shrinking from it. Laying her hands on the gate of the bridge, she seemed to set it as a fence between them. Her voice reached Mina's ears, low, yet as distinct as though she had been by her side, and full of a terrified alarm ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... mother, as I climb'd the fence, The nearest way to town, My apron caught upon a stake, And so ...
— Phebe, the Blackberry Girl - Uncle Thomas's Stories for Good Children • Anonymous
... footprints in the tannery yard which he had wished to examine by daylight. He had intended to show them to that chap Krech, but Jason had spoiled things by hurrying him off to his silly lunch. He descended the stairs, called Nelson to join him, and went to the end of the fence around which the fire ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... a little over thirteen years of age, and you know a boy does not know much at that age, but I thought I did. I went over the fence with mother after me. If dad had been home I guess he could have caught me, that is if he had been sober. Mother could not run very fast, so I got clear of the whip for that time at least. I got a good distance from the house and then ...
— Dave Ranney • Dave Ranney
... fortifications; and this use quite explains the sort of structure here intended. The term and its derivative Bartizan came later to be applied to projecting guerites or watch-towers of masonry. Brattice in English is now applied to a fence round a pit or dangerous machinery. (See Muratori, Dissert. I. 334; Wedgwood's Dict. of Etym. sub. v. Brattice; Viollet le Duc, by Macdermott, p. 40; La Curne de ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... a better knowledge of the localities of the place. But the hunter was perfect in all his field exercises, and scarcely less fleet footed than a deer; and he gained rapidly on the object of his pursuit, which advanced a little distance parallel with the field-fence, and then, as if endowed with the utmost accomplishment of gymnastics, cleared the fence at a leap. The hunter, embarrassed with his rifle and accoutrements, was driven to the slow and humiliating expedient of ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... dismount And tie him to the grey worn fence. I set myself against the javelins of grass and sun; And climb the rounded breast, That flows like a sea-wave. The summit crackles with heat, there is no shelter, no hollow ...
— Young Adventure - A Book of Poems • Stephen Vincent Benet
... midnight, not having yet seen the city, some of the company were confident we must have passed it, and would row no farther; the others knew not where we were; so we put toward the shore, got into a creek, landed near an old fence, with the rails of which we made a fire, the night being cold, in October, and there we remained till daylight. Then one of the company knew the place to be Cooper's Creek, a little above Philadelphia, which we saw as soon ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... almost with a feeling of terror that Miss Mattie beheld him root up the fence. Her idea of repairing was to put in a picket here and there where it was most needed; Red's was to knock it all flat first, and set it up in A1 condition afterward. So, in two hours' time he straightened ...
— Red Saunders • Henry Wallace Phillips
... other villages, and this had now to be wired. Accordingly, on the night of the 22nd/23rd December, the whole Battalion marched up to this line by parties, and worked hard for several hours putting out a "double apron fence." So well had Major Zeller and his Engineers organized the work, and so well did the Battalion work, mainly thanks to the newly arrived Pioneers who were experts, that we did an incredible amount during the night, and received the congratulations of ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills
... her head, but was too wary to be drawn into an argument with the man of books. She could air her father's opinions second hand with an assumption of great assurance, but she was no hand at argument or fence, and had no desire for an ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... advance, we came to the end of the wood, and climbed a succession of hilly fields. From the summit of the last of these, a splendid sweep of farm country was revealed, dotted with quaint Virginia dwellings, stackyards, and negro-cabins, and divided by miles of tortuous worm-fence. The eyes of the Quartermaster brightened at the prospect, though I am afraid that he thought only of the abundant forage; but my own grew hazy as I spoke of the peaceful people and the neglected fields. The plough had furrowed none of these acres, and some crows, that screamed gutturally ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... Major," he said; "but Hosea's driving us, you see, and he could take us along the turnpike blindfold. Why, he actually discovered in passing just before the storm that somebody had dug up a sugar berry bush from the corner of your old rail fence." ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... young man, with a face shining with sorrow, vaulted lightly over the mossed fence and dipped down the green path, among the shadows and the toadstools and ...
— The Worshipper of the Image • Richard Le Gallienne
... be sure to dig up and devour the body before the following day. The grave of a Damara chief is represented on page 302. Now and then a chief orders that his body shall be left in his own house, in which case it is laid on an elevated platform, and a strong fence of thorns and stakes ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow
... of the Coast Guard was perched on the edge of the cliff. Behind it the downs ran back to meet the road. The door of the cabin was open and from it a shaft of light cut across a tiny garden and showed the white fence and the ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... and along with it he traced the gradual evolution of circumstantial evidence. He showed with what suspicion and reluctance the latter had been gradually admitted into our courts, and how succeeding judges had been careful to fence it in and restrain its application. Then he turned to the particular rule of law which Tressamer had relied on in the Assize Court, and repeated and emphasized the arguments made use of by him. He wound up with an impressive appeal to ...
— The Queen Against Owen • Allen Upward
... the result so vast as this might sound. Hardly would the thing have made a wing of the manor house at Chaynes-Wotten. The common or small park before it was shielded from the main thoroughfare by a fence of iron palings, and back of this on either side of a gravelled walk that led to the main entrance were two life-sized stags not ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... highway, lingering by fence and rail to talk with men, living and learning. For the highway meant to him the passion of life. Hope and sorrow traveled it day and night ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... golden ears are piling up under my magic skill, and there is peace. As I take down another bundle from the shock I descry what seems to be a sort of procession wending its way through the orchard. Then the rail fence is surmounted, and the procession solemnly moves across the meadow. In time the president and an assortment of faculty members stand before me, bedight in caps and gowns. I note that their gowns are liberally garnished with Spanish ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... whirled a shackly old saloon, rough and tumble, its character apparent from the men who were grouped about its doorway and from the barrels and kegs in profusion outside. From the doorway issued four men, wiping their mouths and shouting hilariously. Four horses stood tied to a fence near by. They were so instantly passed, and so vaguely seen, that he could not be sure in the least, but those four men reminded him strongly of the four who had ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill
... important battle in which the Rough Riders engaged was that of San Juan Hill, July 1 and 2, 1898. This helped to decide the war. Roosevelt led the charge. His horse became entangled in a barb wire fence, but he jumped off, ran ahead, and still kept in front of his men. He lived up to his advice, ...
— Modern Americans - A Biographical School Reader for the Upper Grades • Chester Sanford
... sneering in the path, turning up the right sleeve of a soiled and ragged saffron shirt with his left hand, the right being engaged most ominously with a sword of a fashion that might well convince the Frenchman he had some new methods of fence to ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... of a candidate to understand any public question. It is a very safe quality, for the more he knows, the less likely is he to commit himself. It is an equally pleasant quality, since it enables its possessor to take the fence and to maintain it, while, by a sort of optical delusion, each party supposes him to be upon its own side. It saves regular out and out lying, if Mr. GREELEY will allow us to use so strong a word. For instance, if asked, "Are you in favor of a ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2., No. 32, November 5, 1870 • Various
... were, the "hominess" of the house as it will appear after its rawness has been mellowed by time, and its forms have been endeared by association. This imagination is specially essential in the planting of trees, arrangement of flower gardens, the choice of the kind of enclosure, whether hedge or fence, and, in general, all that is known under the ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... years before, and whose grim aspect was rendered grotesque by the want of a nose. The next minute the polished floor gave forth sounds of softly shuffling feet, and stamps, as the lad, page or esquire, and evidently for the time guardian of the ante-chamber, began to fence and foin, parry and guard, every now and then delivering a fierce thrust in the latest Italian fashion right at the marked-out heart upon the grim figure's breast. It was warm work, for the lad put plenty of spirit and life into his efforts, and before long his clear, broad forehead and the sides ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn
... here that Governor McTavish failed. He was immediately informed of this illegal act, but did nothing. Hearing of the obstacle on the highway, two of McDougall's officers came on towards Fort Garry, and finding the obstruction, one of them gave command, "Remove that blawsted fence," but the half-breeds refused to obey. The half-breeds seized the mails and all freight coming along the road ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce
... crowd. He was conscious, for he thanked us in a weakish whisper, when we lifted him carefully into his own bed. Then the doctor sent us all out except the assistant, and we went to the front porch and waited, hating the crowd that had lined up against the fence and about the gate. They looked like a lot of buzzards; I couldn't bear the sight of them, so I went back into the little hall and ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... the measles as I've become of London. My Lord! it sounded last night as if we had jumped from the frying pan into the fire. Just as we were about to go to bed the big gun on the beach—just outside the fence around our yard—about 50 yards from the house, began its thundering belch—five times in quick succession, rattling the windows and shaking the very foundation of things. Then after a pause of a few minutes, another round of five shots. Then the other guns all along the beach took ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... pretty view, as he said, but it was too near a thicket where the blacks would lie in ambush, for safety. The old bushmen wanted it planted on a neck of land, where the waters protected it all but one side, and there a row of fence would have ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... modern style, he says, sprang from the invention of the ha-ha by Bridgeman, one of the first landscape gardeners. The 'ha-ha' meant that the garden, instead of being enclosed by a wall, was laid out so as to harmonise with the surrounding country, from which it was only separated by an invisible fence. That is the answer to the problem; is it not a solecism for a lover of gardens to prefer nature to art? A garden is essentially a product of art? and supplants the moor and desert made by unassisted nature. The love of Nature as understood in a later period, by Byron for example, went to this ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... religion. Judaism seemed attacked no less by internal foes than by external calamity; and was likely to perish altogether or to drift into a lower conception of God, unless it could find some stalwart defence. Hence they insisted on the extension of the fence of the law, and abandoned for centuries the mission of the Jews to the outer world. This was the true Galut, or exile; not so much the political exclusion from the land of their fathers, but the enforced exclusion ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... get possession of the piece of land beyond this!" said he, striking with his stick upon the tall red-boarded fence which bounded one side of the garden. "Look here, Elise, peep through that gap; what a magnificent site it is for building—it extends down to the river!—what a magnificent promenade it would make, properly laid out and planted! It might be a real treasure to the whole ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... had been a thankless task. Now, dispirited and fatigued, they were leaning upon the rough wooden fence which divided the burying ground of Father Point church from the road. This church, dedicated to the Good St. Anne, had been built by the pious efforts of pilots on the ships plying the River St. Lawrence and the Gulf. It was intended to ...
— Marie Gourdon - A Romance of the Lower St. Lawrence • Maud Ogilvy
... be real property or personal property depending upon circumstances. Thus a tree growing on the land is real property, but when cut into cord wood becomes personal property. New fence posts ready for use are personal property. When set in the ground they become real estate. Just what goes with a farm or what are fixtures is frequently a subject ...
— The Young Farmer: Some Things He Should Know • Thomas Forsyth Hunt
... robes and was now clad only in an athlete's tunic and soft-soled shoes. I presented Murmex and the Emperor questioned him, as to his age, his upbringing, his father's years in retirement at Nersae, as to Pacideianus and put questions about thrusts and parries designed to test his knowledge of fence. ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... Beekman Street, as if "Little Mac" had sent for him and he had been wasting time in going; but the cheer that went after him was joined in by the invalids at the Park fence, who had caught a part of the dialogue; and the people in the "World" office looked up from their account books, wondering what was the matter in the street; while the politicians in front of Crook and Duff's, ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... I walked out towards what is now called the Island. The road was marked by a rail fence, but of buildings there were none. I went so far that I was near the slave pen, a building now standing and which I have visited within a few years. It was of brick, enclosed within a brick wall, and all of a dingy straw color. At a short distance from the building, I met a black woman walking ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... you, sir!' cried Mr Tapley, in great terror; 'Don't do that! Don't do that, sir! Anything but that! It never helped man, woman, or child, over the lowest fence yet, sir, and it never will. Besides its being of no use to you, it's worse than of no use to me, for the least sound of it will knock me flat down. I can't stand up agin it, sir. ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... Avenue is that they're perfectly safe. You could take away nine-tenths of what they've got and they'd still have about a hundred times more money than they needed to be comfortable. They're like a whole lot of fat animals in an inclosure—they're fed three or four times a day, but the wire fence that protects them from harm deprives them of any real liberty. Or they're like goldfish swimming round and round in a big bowl. They can look through sort of dimly; but they can't get out! If they really knew, they'd trade their security for their ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... that Kendrick stood for an instant, held by his amazement. Then without a sound he sped across the street, vaulted the iron fence and charged into the middle of the excitement with ready fists. The man who had Stiles down was nearest and Phil paused long enough to send him reeling with a well-directed blow on the side of the head. He leaped the overturned bench, and made for the girl's ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... half-finished road a steam roller stood, with its tarpaulin drawn over it for the night. In the field, along the wooden fence, some loads of dross had been shot between the haycocks; lengths of sod had been stripped off the soil and thrown in a heap, and planks had been laid down for the wheelbarrows. A rake, which some haymaker had left, stood planted in the ground, teeth uppermost; beside ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton
... place,—back of Big Thumb Butte. Good pasture; not too big, but enough for any bunch he was ever likely to own. Some fence; some buildings; both in a sad state but reclaimable by a handy man. And water! The finest water in all the country, and it never failed. And cheap! Cheap if one kept one's mind on relative values and off one's own financial troubles; cheap ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans
... air, barks simply from dullness, at the stars, usually three times in succession. No! Mumu's delicate little voice was never raised without good reason; either some stranger was passing close to the fence, or there was some suspicious sound or rustle somewhere. . . . In fact, she was an excellent watch-dog. It is true that there was another dog in the yard, a tawny old dog with brown spots, called Wolf, but he was never, even at night, let off ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Russian • Various
... open country, with free grazing and free access to water, and it is also manifest that these conditions could not long endure in the face of constant westward migration. Homesteaders followed the railroads out across the plains, and the cheapening of wire fence led to the enclosure of great farms including the best grazing lands and the water supply. By 1890, therefore, the great drives were a tale that is told. The less romantic packing business remained, however; ranches supplied the cattle, the railroads transported them, and improvements ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... purpose of dropping such cars past the locomotive, and the haulage way at such point is designated as the principal traveling way, a traveling way, not less than three feet wide and separated from the track by a pillar of coal or substantial fence, shall be provided at one side of that portion of the track from where the locomotive will be detached to the switch of the siding. Such traveling way shall be made on the same side of the track as the refuge holes. In no case shall a locomotive be detached from a train of moving cars, for ...
— Mining Laws of Ohio, 1921 • Anonymous
... been turned as yet in the fields, and the snow lay deep in some fence corners and beneath the hedges, there was, after all, a smell of fresh earth—a clean, live smell—that Hiram Strong had missed all ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... traveled some distance when suddenly they faced a high fence which barred any further progress straight ahead. It ran directly across the road and enclosed a small forest of tall trees, set close together. When the group of adventurers peered through the bars of the fence they thought this forest looked more gloomy and ...
— The Patchwork Girl of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... fence was down. She walked across the road and took a path leading through a cottonfield, which, protected on all sides by the wood, and being on the elevated plateau on which the residence stood, had escaped the ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... more than a victory to us," Captain Davenant said, as, with a group of officers, he sat by a fire, made of a fence hastily pulled down. "His majesty has his virtues, and, with good counsellors, would make a worthy monarch; but among his virtues military genius is not conspicuous. I should be glad, myself, if Lauzun and the French would also take their departure, and let us have Mountcashel's ...
— Orange and Green - A Tale of the Boyne and Limerick • G. A. Henty |
