"Hammer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... gnashed his teeth at him and again snapped his fingers. He burned to rush round the table and hammer the life out of Grey, but he could not do it; violent words, not violent deeds, were his accomplishment. Moreover, there was something daunting in Grey's cold and steady eye. He snapped his fingers again, and, pouring out a stream of furious abuse, turned to the door and flung out of ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... surprised over its carrion throws itself blindly into the pack that disturbs its meal; he is already chasing them, he is about to tear them, when amid the yelping of the dogs a gun hammer gently clicks; the wolf recognises it by the click, glances in that direction; he notices that in the rear, behind the hounds, a hunter, half crouching and upon one knee, is moving the gun barrel towards him and is just touching the trigger; the wolf droops its ears ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... and scuttled down to make way for her sister. The daring rider across country possessed stronger nerves, but also a heavier body, and the ladder creaked so ominously beneath her that she insisted upon the whole company acting as props, in one breath sending them running for hammer and rope, and in the next shrieking to them to return to ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... and general roustabout had performed his part. Our little man, Garfield, too, had found employment in holding the hammer to clinch the nails and giving much advice on the coming voyage. All were busy, I say, and no one had given a thought of what we were about to encounter from the port officials farther up the coast; it was pretended by them that a passport ...
— Voyage of the Liberdade • Captain Joshua Slocum
... though there was nothing in the situation nor in the text of the play to warrant it, I broke into tremendous applause, from which I desisted only at the scowl of an usher—an object in a celluloid collar and a claw-hammer coat. My solitary ovation to Master Delorme was an involuntary and, I think, pardonable protest against the male costume ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... proceeded, glowing with mutual affection, till they reached the edge of the campus, when the others saw the Twins suddenly loose their hold on each other, and fall to, hammer and tongs, over some quarrel whose beginning the ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... large courts built on purpose, and attracts many strangers. To view it, however, as a national sport, one should see it in some of the mountain villages, where it is still the great recreation for Sundays and religious fiestas. The working-classes also play at throwing the hammer or crowbar. This is more especially the case in the Northern provinces, where the workmen are a sound, healthy, and sober race, enjoying simple and healthy amusements, and affording an excellent example to those of countries considering themselves ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... from the harbour of Africa, When all the slaves took up their tools for the bidding of Barbara; She smote the bare wall with her hand, and bade them smite again, She poured them wealth of wine and meat to stay them in their pain, And cried through the lifted thunder of thronging hammer and hod: 'Throw open the third window in the third name of God!' Then the hearts failed and the tools fell; and far towards the foam Men saw a shadow on the sands; and ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... in his hand, and, suddenly raising it, fired point-blank at his man, not fifteen feet away. The hammer snapped on the nipple, but the cartridge did not explode. Wilbur turned to the Chinaman next him ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... awoke I was lying stark naked upon the floor of my cell. My head was racking and throbbing like a hammer. Raising my hand to my forehead I sharply withdrew it. It was quite wet, and as I looked more closely, I saw that it was blood. I felt again and found my face clotted and my hair reeking wet from a ragged wound on the head. Evidently the soldier whose rifle ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... straight at Marsden's heart. Marsden never moved. Then as the two men faced one another thus, looking into one another's eyes, their ears caught a sound from behind the closed door of the inner room—a sharp, hard, metallic sound as if some one in the room within had raised the hammer of a pistol—a jewelled pistol like ...
— Further Foolishness • Stephen Leacock
... masses. And on the other hand we have the warlike drift of such a social body, the inevitable intensification of international animosities in such a body, the absolute determination evident in the scheme of things to smash such a body, to smash it just as far as it is such a body, under the hammer of war, that must finally bring about rapidly and under pressure the same result as that to which the peaceful evolution slowly tends. While we are as yet only thinking of a physiological struggle, of complex reactions and slow absorptions, comes War with the surgeon's ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... with a caulking hammer in one hand, a wedge in the other, driving tar-soaked oakum between the planks so as to make a water-tight seam, and as the young men came up he wiped his steamy brow with his arm, and looked at all with ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... mon pere," and Marie imitated in pantomime the use of the hammer and chisel. "Cut them ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... Brace, laughing, as he lowered the hammer of his piece, for the sea-cow suddenly gave a wallow and went down with a loud splash as if it had been alarmed by the sight of something approaching, while its disturbance of the water acted upon the great alligator, which sank at once, startling another, ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn
... surrounded by all the appliances of philosophy, science, art, mechanics, all the discoveries made before and in Albrecht Duerer's day, in the book, the chart, the lever, the crystal, the crucible, the plane, the hammer. The intention of this picture has been disputed, but the best explanation of it is that which regards the woman as pondering on the humanly unsolved and insoluble mystery of the sin and ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... repairman said, plugging the cord into a wall socket. He returned to the set, and switched it on, without changing its upside down position. The big screen lit almost at once; a pained face appeared, with a large silhouetted hammer striking the image's forehead in ...
— Something Will Turn Up • David Mason
... out his own heavy Colt's revolver, removed the cartridges, tested the hammer, and refilled the chambers. Out of the corner of his eye he watched Wilson to see that he was equally careful. The latter could not help but smile a little. He felt more as though he were on the stage than in real life. ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... things sold up. You left owing her a hundred francs, but I have paid her; and talking of you we waited till the auctioneer arrived. Everything had been pulled down; the tapestry from the walls, the picture, the two vases I gave you were on the table waiting the stroke of the hammer. And then the men, all the marchands de meubles in the quartier, came upstairs, spitting and talking coarsely—their foul voices went through me. They stamped, spat, pulled the things about, nothing escaped them. One of them held up the Japanese dressing-gown and made some ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... that is to be my calling I will go at it,' said I to myself. I did so, and soon could turn a chair very neatly out of hand. Arthur could make no hand at the blacksmith work—his arm had not strength to wield a hammer; I went to his master and asked him to let him off. 'No, I never does anything without an equivalent,' was his answer; 'but I'll tell you what, youngster, I happen to want some chairs for my woman and children to sit on; ...
— The Log House by the Lake - A Tale of Canada • William H. G. Kingston
... his country as he said it. So the empire waited and debated, but the sounds of the bugle were already breaking through the wrangles of the politicians, and calling the nation to be tested once more by that hammer of war and adversity by which Providence still fashions us to some ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... common-place, at times repulsive occupations. Your spirit is extinguished, your responsibility as an intelligent man is destroyed at settled hours by the sound of the bugle or of the trumpet, those flourishes of gilded servitude; and beneath the heavy hammer of passive obedience your temples are already growing grey; you have wrinkles on your forehead and on your heart, for you have reached that part of the cup of life, at which one drinks little else than bitterness ... But you forget all that; ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... finger's ends," p. 36. The preceding is a list of the worthy Captain's ROMANCES; some of which, at least in their original shape, were unknown to Ritson: what would be the amount of their present produce under the hammer of those renowned black-letter-book auctioneers in King-street, Covent Garden—? Speak we, in the next place, of the said military bibliomaniac's collection of books in "PHILOSOPHY MORAL and NATURAL." "Beside Poetry and Astronomy, and other hid sciences, ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... to me: "The priests wield an immense, an incalculable power. All are on the same path, all hammer away at the one point. It is the persistency, the organisation, that tells. In some cases they have been known to preach for a year and a half at a stretch on political subjects. What is ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... he declared enthusiastically. "The Britishers make all manner of fun of 'em. Call 'em 'mechanical fleas' and all that. But with a hammer, a monkey-wrench, and some bale-wire, a fellow can perform major and minor operations on a fliver in the middle of a garageless wilderness and come through all right when better cars are left for the junk department to ...
— Ruth Fielding at the War Front - or, The Hunt for the Lost Soldier • Alice B. Emerson
... Verdant Green; which was undoubtedly true. And he then showed his absorbing interest in literary studies by neglecting the society of Mr. Verdant Green and immersing himself in the perusal of one of those vivid accounts of "a rattling set-to between Nobby Buffer and Hammer Sykes" which make "Bell's Life" the favourite reading of ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... see them. She also theorized about the cause and ultimate effect of these symptoms, and explained the degrees of heat and cold which burned or chilled her, and the growth of a pain to its exquisite startling apex, its subsequent slow recession, and the thud of an india-rubber hammer which ensued when the pain had ebbed to its easiest level. It did not occur to either of them to send for a doctor. Doctors in such cases are seldom sent for, seldom even thought of. One falls sick according to some severely definite, ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... sometimes fondly suppose, is more powerful with me than with many people—I began to think of another evening, twenty and more years ago, when for the first time I heard the most dainty of English comic songs sung as it should be, with the first words of the chorus accentuated like hammer ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... for a pair of barons; you turned down the barons for a pair of viscounts; the viscounts for a pair of earls; the earls for a pair of marquises; the marquises for a brace of dukes. NOW, Aleck, cash in! —you've played the limit. You've got a job lot of four dukes under the hammer; of four nationalities; all sound in the wind and limb and pedigree, all bankrupt and in debt up to the ears. They come high, but we can afford it. Come, Aleck, don't delay any longer, don't keep up the suspense: take the whole ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... punishments, as to lay the soul as on a burning rack. Now also the judgment, as with a mighty maul, driveth down the soul in the sense and pangs of everlasting misery into that pit that has no bottom; yea, it turneth again, and, as with a hammer, it riveteth every fearful thought and apprehension of the soul so fast that it can never be loosed again for ever and ever. Alas! now the conscience can sleep, be dull, be misled, or batter, no longer; no, it must ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... crowd at the sale 'n' some grand stuff goes under the hammer. Pappy kids the crowd along 'n' sells 'em so fast it makes you dizzy. They don't more'n lead a ...
— Blister Jones • John Taintor Foote
... induction coil the anvil is also found. Thus in the cut representing the end of an induction coil and its circuit breaker in which O and O' and P and P' represent the secondary circuit terminal connections A is the core of soft iron wires, h is the anvil; the hammer when resting upon it so as to be in contact closes the circuit. When the current coming from the primary to the post i, passes through the hammer and anvil h, and emerges by m, it magnetizes the core; this attracts the hammer, which is made ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... of diplomacy and warfare, a Coalition very rarely holds together under a succession of sharp blows. This is inherent in the nature of things. A complex or heterogeneous substance is easily split up by strokes which leave a homogeneous body intact. Rocks of volcanic origin defy the hammer under which conglomerates crumble away; and when these last are hurled against granite or flint, they splinter at once. Well might Shakespeare speak through the mouth of Ulysses these wise words on the divisions of ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... his kitchen wench squeak a defiance from an upper window, from which she bolted with great rapidity as soon as she had thus represented the valor of the establishment, and when next seen it was in the cellar, wedged in between two barrels of beer. The men went at it hammer and tongs, and in twenty-four hours a good many cannon-balls traversed the building, a great many stuck in the walls like plums in a Christmas pudding, the doors were blown in with petards, and the principal defenders, with a few wounded Roundheads, were carried ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... his hammer and, brushing a little snuff from his coat, leaned back in his chair and eyed them ...
— Odd Craft, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... against the dead man seized him. He threw books about the room. He cried out vile insults and mingled words of an unfortunate commonness with others of extreme rarity. He wanted to go off to Kensal Green and hammer at the grave there and tell the departed knight exactly what he thought of him. Then presently he became calmer, he lit a pipe, picked up the books from the floor, and meditated revenges upon Sir Isaac's memory. I deplore my task of recording these ungracious moments in Mr. ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... him. Again he said unto her, Stand in the door of the tent, and it shall be, when any man doth come and enquire of thee, and say, Is there any man here? that thou shalt say, No. Then Jael, Heber's wife, took a nail of the tent, and took an hammer in her hand, and went softly unto him, and smote the nail into his temples, and fastened it into the ground: for he was fast asleep and weary. ...
— The Dore Gallery of Bible Illustrations, Complete • Anonymous
... was early in the summer—he came with his derricks, a steam-engine, a trip-hammer, and a lot of men. They took off the roof of my house, removed the engine, and set ...
— The Magic Egg and Other Stories • Frank Stockton
... strange to be feeling there, In the little green orchard; Whether you paint or draw, Dig, hammer, chop or saw; When you are most alone, All but the silence gone... Some one is watching and waiting there, In the little ...
— Peacock Pie, A Book of Rhymes • Walter de la Mare
... It is singular that it should have no substance in the interior of its trunk, though the outside to the thickness of a couple of inches makes the finest of boards, and when seasoned is so hard as to turn a board-nail at a single stroke of the hammer. It is remarkable also that a palm tree which grows so high has such tiny, thread-like roots, which, however, are innumerable. The top of the palm yields a vegetable which is used as food and when boiled is nutritious and palatable, resembling ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... an old bachelor and was both a very skilful workman and a very great sot. He had keys to all the cathedral vaults and was fond of prowling about the old pile and its dismal crypt, for ever tap-tapping, with a little hammer he carried, on its stones and walls, hunting for forgotten cavities, in which, perhaps, centuries before, persons had been buried. He wore a coarse flannel suit with horn buttons and a yellow handkerchief with draggled ends, and it was ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... it, we must proceed in the following manner. Lay the canvas evenly on the frame and nail it over the back; when all four sides are thus secured, take the wedges, and hammer them into the holes made purposely for them until the canvas is sufficiently stretched. Be careful to place the board in a good light for painting; it takes much longer to do, and cannot be done half as well either, if the worker sits so that the shadow of her hand falls on the picture. A piece ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various
... leathern coat as well," said mine host, sharply; "the hammer and tools are as naught ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... bands of red (top) and black with a centered yellow emblem consisting of a five-pointed star within half a cogwheel crossed by a machete (in the style of a hammer and sickle) ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... rang out the sound of a tocsin—the stroke of a hammer upon a steel rim from a locomotive wheel, and which was hung aloft in the only firehouse ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren
... had a deep sympathy with your fair city in this tremendous enterprise, and has watched with keen interest and satisfaction your success in overcoming the many difficulties that lay in your way. Brooklyn herself has awakened from her sleep of almost ten years, and the sound of the hammer and the saw and the ring of the trowel are heard on every hand. Owing to the enterprise, energy and self-sacrificing efforts of many of the men who are with us to-day, she is astonishing the country by the wonderful increase in population. Brooklyn ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis
... Kharput, which was another station or collecting place for the deported. A German eye-witness tells us what fate waited them. 'They have had their eyebrows plucked out, their breasts cut off, their nails torn off; their torturers hew off their feet, or else hammer nails into them as they do in shoeing horses. This is all done at night-time, in order that people may not hear their screams and know of their agony. Soldiers are stationed round the prisons, beating drums and blowing whistles. It is needless to relate that many died of these ...
— Crescent and Iron Cross • E. F. Benson
... policeman to take charge. They had broken up into little groups, gathered about their own vociferous stump-orators. The result was babel. Of orators there were a plenty. They abused one another across the Irish Sea. They tried to shout one another down across the Atlantic Ocean. But the hammer-head men of righteousness were gone. After the apocalyptic splendor of mailed knights of Christ charging stern-faced down to Armageddon, the results of victory had been consigned to the weakling care of ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... sauntered over to the man working on the pile of stones before the gates of the cemented mansion, and seating himself on the broken metal, entered into conversation with the two-inch mason wielding the hammer. ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... that, Ben was a little surprised when the auctioneer's hammer fell, and he shouted, "Sold! for five dollars, to—What's your ...
— Harper's Young People, June 22, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... however, some streets asunder. I saw them nearly every day. Like everybody else, I found Mr. Hawthorne very taciturn. His few words were, however, very telling. When I talked French, he told me it was capital: 'It came down like a sledge-hammer.' His little satirical remarks were such as these: It was March and I took a bunch of violets to Rosa; notched white paper was wound around them, and Mr. Hawthorne said, 'They have on ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... to me," said Hadrian. Then the Rabbi took Luz, a small bone of the spine, and immersed it in water, but it was not softened; he put it into the fire, but it was not consumed; he put it into a mill, but it could not be pounded; he placed it upon an anvil and struck it with a hammer, but the anvil split and the hammer was broken. (See also Zohar in ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... love atwixt us, master, cried the steward, making some very unequivocal demonstrations toward hostility; so mind yourself! square your self, I say! do you smell this here bit of a sledge-hammer? ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... he answered. "Mis' Barom she's waitin' for you. Them carpets is come, sir. Tracy's wagon brought 'em 'bout an hour ago. I told her I'd help her lay 'em if she wanted me to, but she said you was comin' with the hammer an' tacks. 'Twarn't that she thought I was too little. It was jest that there wasn't no tacks. I tol' her jest call me in any time to do anythin' she want done, an' ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... calculated to conciliate and capture the votes of hesitating, or Border-State men; that of Garfield was perhaps the most scholarly and eloquent; while that of Stevens was remarkable for its sledge-hammer pungency ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... is written, DIG 7 yds. N., two pack-bags, containing 135 pounds flour, six leather water-bottles, two tomahawks, one pick, one water canteen, one broken telescope, three emu eggs, some girths and straps, one shoeing hammer, one pound of candles, and left a lantern hanging on a tree. A bottle was also buried, with a letter in it, giving the latitude and longitude of the camp, and a brief outline of our former and future intended movements. ...
— Explorations in Australia • John Forrest
... and the German squadron were now at it hammer and tongs. Seeing that all hope of escape had been cut off, the German commander turned to face his new foes, determined to give ...
— The Boy Allies Under Two Flags • Ensign Robert L. Drake
... delighted, and clapping his hands. "I believe your rough workman's hammer has hit the right nail on the head, and hit it ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... chopping at that rate, for when I fended off he made my whole hand tingle with the force of his blow; so I darts at him and drives the hilt of my cutlass right into his mouth, and he fell, and his own men trod him underfoot, and on we went, hammer and tongs. By this time the boarding of the launch and pinnace to leeward, for they could not get up as soon as we did, created a divarsian, and bothered the Frenchman, who hardly knew which way to turn; however, as there were more of ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... 17, at the south side, is an impact machine designed to gauge the sensitiveness of explosives to shock. For this purpose, a drop-hammer, constructed to meet the following requirements, is used: A substantial, unyielding foundation; minimum friction in the guide-grooves; and no escape or scattering of the explosive when struck by the falling weight. This machine is modeled after ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXX, Dec. 1910 • Herbert M. Wilson
... a tiny shower of sparks followed the fall of the hammer, and the captain uttered an angry roar like that of ...
— The Dingo Boys - The Squatters of Wallaby Range • G. Manville Fenn
... The hammer snapped sharply on the cartridge; a great wave of horror and revulsion swept over me in a rush of blood to my head, and I dropped the revolver on the floor and threw myself on ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... away to get a hammer and chisel, and a pail to put the broken plaster in. Lady Arctura stood and waited. The silence closed in upon her. She began to feel eerie. She felt as if she had but to will and see through the wall to what lay beyond it. To keep herself from so willing, she had all but reduced herself to mental ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... a curtain[111]," "and spread them out as a tent to dwell in[112]:" to "bind up the waters in His thick clouds[113]," and "in a garment[114]," &c., &c.[115] It is only needful to look out the word in the dictionary of Gesenius to see that spreading out, (as of thin plates of metal by a hammer,) is the only notion which properly belongs to the word. Accordingly, the earliest modern Latin translation from the Hebrew, (that of Pagninus,) renders the word expansio. And so the word has stood for centuries in the margin of our ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... scatters on all sides, and without relaxation, resplendent trills, upon which fall, at regular intervals, the heavy strokes from the belfry of Notre-Dame, which makes them sparkle like the anvil under the hammer. At intervals you behold the passage of sounds of all forms which come from the triple peal of Saint-Germaine des Pres. Then, again, from time to time, this mass of sublime noises opens and gives passage to the beats of the Ave Maria, which bursts forth and sparkles like an aigrette of stars. ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... went. George went up into Maitland's room, where Mary was never admitted; and soon she heard him hammer, hammering at metal, over-head. She was too used to that sound to take notice of it; so she went to bed, but lay long awake, thinking of poor ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... a bent-over position, making their way from bush to bush, careful to move silently. Rick's pulse began to hammer. Why should anyone come to the ghost town, especially in a darkened vehicle? For the first time he felt hope. They might find out ...
— The Scarlet Lake Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... yard between the barns and the farm buildings and gazing attentively into a fire which he had kindled on the ground between stones and logs, and which was now crackling merrily. He straightened around a small anvil which was standing beside it, laid down a hammer and a pair of tongs so as to have them ready to grasp, tested the points of some large wheel-nails which he drew forth from the breast-pocket of a leather apron he had tied around him, put the nails down in the bottom of the rack-wagon, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... linen, shirts, kerchiefs, socks-not that wear any—to coax me? No, nothing but one piece of abuse after another, though she knows the proverb they have here that 'an ass loaded with gold goes lightly up a mountain,' and that 'gifts break rocks,' and 'praying to God and plying the hammer,' and that 'one "take" is better than two "I'll give thee's."' Then there's my master, who ought to stroke me down and pet me to make me turn wool and carded cotton; he says if he gets hold of me he'll tie me naked to a tree and double the tale of ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... the daily digested poison of self-love, worldly pleasure, fleshly felicity. It is the only worthy poison of ambition, covetousness, extortion, uncleanness, licentiousness, wrath, strife, sedition, sects, malice, and such other wayward worms: it is the hard hammer that breaketh off the rust from the anchor of a Christian faith. O profitable instrument! O excellent exercise, that cannot be spared in a Christian life! with what alacrity of mind, with what desirous affection, with what earnest zeal, ought we to embrace this incomparable ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... hands, after all...And they waited, with an uncomfortably beating heart, for the oracle to speak. After a long and silent inspection, Mr. Scogan would suddenly look up and ask, in a hoarse whisper, some horrifying question, such as, "Have you ever been hit on the head with a hammer by a young man with red hair?" When the answer was in the negative, which it could hardly fail to be, Mr. Scogan would nod several times, saying, "I was afraid so. Everything is still to come, still to come, though it can't be very far off now." Sometimes, ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... higher regions of the Alpujarras, on a skirt of which stands Granada. A common occupation of the Gitanos of Granada is working in iron, and it is not unfrequent to find these caves tenanted by Gypsy smiths and their families, who ply the hammer and forge in the bowels of the earth. To one standing at the mouth of the cave, especially at night, they afford a picturesque spectacle. Gathered round the forge, their bronzed and naked bodies, illuminated by the flame, appear like figures ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow
... kiln. This bowl contained about ten "Buddha's hands" of beautiful yellow and fine proportions. On the right, was suspended, on a Japanese-lacquered frame, a white jade sonorous plate. Its shape resembled two eyes, one by the side of the other. Next to it hung a small hammer. ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... care should soon be the case. In a moment, she was quite naked, and clasped to my equally naked body. I had been expecting her, and thinking over the delights of our last fuck, so that I was rampant before her arrival. She was equally eager for the fray, and at it we went hammer and tongs, and soon brought the first bout to a close, in mutual "ah's!" and "oh's!" of delight. We soaked for some time in the delicious enjoyment. Then mamma scolded both herself and me for our precipitation, ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... corner, I went to the shaft or hole from which the gold ore is taken. After the two men went down the shaft, the men at the top hauled up the bucket, and they put in the tools, which were eight sharp drills, an eight-pound sledge-hammer, and a scraper about three feet long. I got in among the tools, and down I went. It was warm above, but on the way down the shaft, which was thirty feet deep, it became cooler and damper. I stood on one side with a small pick to cut out nuggets, while the men drilled a hole about ...
— The Great Round World And What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1. No. 23, April 15, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... a smith stand with his hammer, thus, The whilst his iron did on the anvil cool, With open mouth swallowing ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... two ways," explained Fil. "We wash it from scooped-up gravel, and we break it out of rock with a hammer." ...
— Fil and Filippa - Story of Child Life in the Philippines • John Stuart Thomson
... a strong and powerful woman holding a hammer, and the figure of Mercury and the prow of a vessel ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 492, June 6, 1885 • Various
... he decided to be done with dallying, and to bring Ruth between the hammer and the anvil of his will. It was the last Sunday in July, exactly three weeks after Sedgemoor, and the odd coincidence of his having chosen such a day and hour you shall ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... very little by his second visit to the cave. He took with him several tools, a short axe, a screw-driver and a hammer. He forced open some of the packing-cases which were piled near the cistern. They were filled with steel bars of various sizes, steel wrought into various shapes and odd-looking coils of copper wire. Gorman knew little of engineering or mechanics. He was merely puzzled by what he ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... with dim or dimmer memories of husbands lost off the Banks, or elsewhere at sea—who came in to get his meals and make his bed, and then had instructions to leave. It was in one of her prevailing absences that I arrived with my bag, and I had to hammer a long time with the knocker on the open door before Alderling came clacking down the stairs in his slippers from the top of the house, and gave me his somewhat defiant greeting. I could almost have said that he did not recognize me at the ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells
... lofty contempt of discipline, and his precocious intimacy with tobacco. I preferred him to the good, well-behaved boys. Whenever we had leave out I used to buy gum-arabic at the druggist's in La Chatre, and break it up with a small hammer at the far end of my room, away from prying eyes. I used there to distribute it into three bags ticketed respectively: "large pieces," "middle-sized pieces," "small pieces." When I returned to school with the three ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... reproach me with a love of money, it is the sin to which youth is the least lenient. But what! can I look round the world and not see its value, its necessity? Year after year, from my first manhood, I have toiled and toiled to preserve from the hammer these last remnants of my ancestor's remains. Year after year fortune has slipped from my grasp; and, after all my efforts, and towards the close of a long life, I stand on the very verge of penury. But you ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... deserve your good luck; you don't come down on a fellow, hammer and tongs, because he happens to meet with ...
— Little Folks Astray • Sophia May (Rebecca Sophia Clarke)
... which he could forward her trunk. On her return from the shop where she had telephoned, she went into a grocer's, where, for twopence, she purchased a small packing case. With this she contrived to make a cradle for her baby, by knocking out the projecting nails with a hammer borrowed from the pimply-faced woman at her lodging. If the extemporised cradle lacked adornment, it was adorable by reason of the love and devotion with which she surrounded her little one. Her box arrived in the course of the evening, when Mavis set about ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... adventures. Unquestionably, the psychology is simpler, cruder, more elementary than that of Richardson. Dr. Johnson, who much preferred the author of "Pamela" to the author of "Tom Jones" and said so in the hammer-and-tongs style for which he is famous, declared to Bozzy that "there is all the difference in the world between characters of nature and characters of manners: and there is the difference between ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... found an odd fact in the report before her. "One of the most difficult things to buy at the present time in the West End of London," it ran, "is a hammer...." ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... prospects. But had I read it I could scarce have seen more clear in her designs. Maybe I was countryfeed; at least, I was not so much so as she thought; and it was plain enough, even to my homespun wits, that she was bent to hammer up a match between her cousin and a beardless boy that was something of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the beauty," Ricardo went on expansively, hiding his lack of some sort of probable story under this loquacity. "I had to hammer him away from the spout. Opened afresh all the old broken spots on his head. You saw how hard I had to hit. He has no restraint, no restraint at all. If it wasn't that he can be made useful in one way or another, I would just as soon have ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... changes horses at Renner's Springs for the "Downs' trip"; and as his keen eyes run over the mob, his voice raps out their verdict like an auctioneer's hammer. "He's fit. So is he. Cut that one out. That colt's A1. The chestnut's done. So is the brown. I'll risk that mare. That black's too fat." No hesitation: horse after horse rejected or approved, until the team is complete; and then ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... of sandstone, whilst others are on smooth stones artificially prepared for the purpose. A small piece of flint was supposed to have been inserted into a partially burnt handle. There are several examples of hammer-stones of the ordinary crannog type, rubbing-stones, whetstones, as well as a large number of water-worn stones which might have been used as hand-missiles or sling-stones. These latter were not native to the hill, and must have been transported from burns in the neighbourhood. There are also two ...
— The Clyde Mystery - a Study in Forgeries and Folklore • Andrew Lang
... we Americans have been accustomed to call it, has now been open five days, but is not yet in complete order, nor anything like it. The sound of the saw and the hammer salutes the visiter from every side, and I think not less than five hundred carpenters and other artisans are busy in the building to-day. The week will probably close before the fixtures will have all been put up and the articles ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... time is wholly dependent upon the rapidity with which impressions succeed one another. Were we capable of receiving only one impression an hour, like a bell struck every hour with a hammer, the ordinary term of life would seem very short. On the other hand, if our time sense were always as acute as it is in dreams, uncounted aeons would seem to be lived through in the interval between ...
— Four-Dimensional Vistas • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... in the lead enclosed; it is beaten with a hammer and several times extended; the lead is folded and kept wrapped up in parchment so that the powder may not be spilt; then melt the lead, and the powder will be on the top of the melted lead, which must then be rubbed between two plates of steel ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... was lifted in a triumphant burst of sound, and Thomas Jefferson's heart began to pound like a trip-hammer. Was this his call—his one last chance to enter the ark of safety? Just there was the pinch. A saying of Japheth Pettigrass's, overheard in Hargis's store on the first day of the meetings, flicked into his mind and stuck there: ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... constitutionally susceptible of noises. A carpenter's hammer, in a warm summer noon, will fret me into more than midsummer madness. But those unconnected, unset sounds are nothing to the measured malice of music. The ear is passive to those single strokes; willingly enduring stripes, while it hath no task to con. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... was not a moment to spare; the hole was just big enough for him to get into; and in one second he had scrambled through and was inside the tree. There were some large pieces of bark lying inside, and he picked one up and nailed it over the hole with a hammer which he happened to have in his pocket. So there he was, in a safe little house of his own, and the wolves could not get at him ...
— Eyebright - A Story • Susan Coolidge
... the drama she had naturally formed conclusions. After a respectable interval her son arrived, and having delivered himself of a remark in Spanish and being answered in French, proceeded to hammer a row of enormous nails into the wall at regular intervals. Arithelli sat upon her trunk, which she considered cleaner than the chairs, and watched the process, her green eyes assuming a curious veiled expression, a hank of copper-tinted hair ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... stood a little man in the attitude of the Colossus of Rhodes, his bare bald head red and perspiring, and his eyes glaring through huge gold-bowed glasses at a bit of rock in one hand, which he had evidently just broken off with the hammer ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... Schloss Kirche, in the city of Wittenberg, is an old archway, with pillars carved as if twisted and with figures of saints overhead, the sharpness of the cutting being somewhat broken and worn away through time. It is the doorway which rang loud three hundred years ago to the sound of Luther's hammer as he nailed up his ninety-five theses. Within the church, about midway toward the altar and near the wall, the guide lifts an oaken trap-door and shows you, beneath, the slab which covers Luther's ashes. Just opposite, in a sepulchre precisely similar, lies Melancthon, and in the chancel near ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... Bal. You yellow-hammer! why, shaver! That such poore things as these, onely made up Of Taylors shreds and Merchants Silken rags And Pothecary drugs (to lend their breaths Sophisticated smells, when their ranke guts Stink worse than cowards in the heat of ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... maintain the momentariness of all things teach that there are two kinds of destruction, one of a gross kind, which consists in the termination of a series of similar momentary existences, and is capable of being perceived as immediately resulting from agencies such as the blow of a hammer (breaking a jar, e.g.); and the other of a subtle kind, not capable of being perceived, and taking place in a series of similar momentary existences at every moment. The former is called pratisankhya-destruction; the latter apratisankhya-destruction.— ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... result that must follow this failure to take up my paper. I looked at the slow-moving hand on the clock, and saw minute after minute go by with a stoicism that surprised even myself. At last the stroke of the hammer fell; the die was cast. I would be protested, that greatest of all evils dreaded by a man of business. As to going home to dinner, that was out of the question; I could not have eaten a mouthful to save me. All I had now to do was to wait ...
— Off-Hand Sketches - a Little Dashed with Humor • T. S. Arthur
... with a soul? Has she not feelings as we have? What right has any one, without regard to her pain, her ideas, or her requirements, to hammer her out, as a cheap metal, out of which a workman fashions a candlestick or an extinguisher? Is it because the poor creatures are already so feeble and miserable that a brute claims the power to torture them, merely at the dictate of ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... superior order, the prizes in which were sufficiently attractive to draw, not only local athletes, but even some of the best from the neighbouring city. A crack runner was expected and perhaps even McGee, the big policeman of the London City force, a hammer thrower of fame, might ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... prototype of St. Peter's; basilicas which enshrine the ashes of some of the mightiest of the dead; the stone where Dante stood to gaze on the Campanile; the house of Michael Angelo, still occupied by a descendant of his lineage and name, his hammer, his chisel, his dividers, his manuscript poems, all as if he had left them but yesterday; airy bridges, which seem not so much to rest on the earth as to hover over the waters they span; the loveliest creations of ancient art, rescued from the grave of ages again ...
— The Uses of Astronomy - An Oration Delivered at Albany on the 28th of July, 1856 • Edward Everett
... seemed alive with the noise of her movements. Now the door creaked as it swung open before her. She waited, heart beating like a trip hammer, and stared into the ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... garden. Gow Yum and Chan Chi, under enormous Chinese grass hats, were planting green onions. Old Hughie, hoe in hand, plodded along the main artery of running water, opening certain laterals, closing others. From the work-shed beyond the barn the strokes of a hammer told Saxon that Carlsen was wire-binding vegetable boxes. Mrs. Paul's cheery soprano, lifted in a hymn, doated through the trees, accompanied by the whirr of an egg-beater. A sharp barking told where Possum still waged hysterical and baffled war on ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... little harbor. It was so still and so early that the village was but half awake. I could hear no voices but those of the birds, small and great,—the constant song sparrows, the clink of a yellow-hammer over in the woods, and the far conversation of some deliberate crows. I saw William Blackett's escaping sail already far from land, and Captain Littlepage was sitting behind his closed window as I passed by, watching for some one who ...
— The Country of the Pointed Firs • Sarah Orne Jewett
... Fort Sumter had flashed along our coast an appeal whose force no words can ever compute. The days had been busy with the assembling of armies, the nights restless with their solemn marches, and forge and factory rang with the strokes of the hammer and the whirr of flying shafts, whose echoes seemed measured to the air of some new Marseillaise. From our homes rushed forth sons, husbands, brothers, fathers, followed by the prayers and blessings of dear ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... kind of run off a little, then turned around and made for Ruddy again and struck Ruddy and knocked him into a heap. This was the first time for Ruddy; and he got right up and as Jack came up, he just rained the blows on Jack until Jack began to wilt and finally he came up with a regular sledge hammer and Jack fell over on the sand flat on his back, and lay there, his big white chest just goin' up and down like a bellows. I forgot to say that Harold Carman was there; and every time one was knocked down, he began to count. Mitch said if ...
— Mitch Miller • Edgar Lee Masters
... take a keen pleasure in the novelty of the situation, and ran up-stairs and down with hammer and broom, laughing and joking over the settlement of every picture and piece of furniture with contagious good humour. Alec could not understand it. Even his Aunt Eunice was not as downcast as he had pictured her in the night, over the loss of her old home. ...
— Flip's "Islands of Providence" • Annie Fellows Johnston
... nut and shell structure. As there are all seedling trees in this particular woods, several outstanding trees have been checked and especially as to cracking qualities of the nuts. At harvest time a hammer is part of the equipment and the nuts are cracked at the tree and the tree marked for discard ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 43rd Annual Meeting - Rockport, Indiana, August 25, 26 and 27, 1952 • Various
... him at home," whispered Lombard, who was listening at the door. "Every thing is in good order," he added in a low voice. "The dear enraged people will have to hammer a good while before breaking these bolts. By that time I shall be far from here, on the road ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... him, he lived, you know, over on the east road toward the pond—as I was saying, one night about nine o'clock, there came two quick raps at our front door, as loud almost as if you had struck with a hammer; Waters was just lighting his pipe at the kitchen fire, and he gave such a spring when the sudden thumps came on the door that he upset a pitcher of yeast I had left by the fire to rise, of course that was of no consequence, and I only mention it as a circumstance connected with the warning, ...
— Walter Harland - Or, Memories of the Past • Harriet S. Caswell
... repeat any combination which they have once repeated, unless forcibly prevented from doing so—which alone renders nine- tenths of our mechanical inventions of practical use to us. There is no internal periodicity about a hammer or a saw, but there is in the steam-engine or watermill when once set in motion. The actions of these machines recur in a regular series, at regular intervals, with the ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... proceeded to open the cases which had so long been objects of interest to his own party, and objects of intense curiosity to the Eskimos, who crowded round the entrance of the shallow cavern with eager looks, while their leader went to work with hammer and chisel on the ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... Lady H. Will you be good enough to decide between the various readings marked, and erase the other; or our deliverer may be as puzzled as a commentator, and belike repeat both. If these versicles won't do, I will hammer out some more endecasyllables. ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... in their present condition, and will set to work to fabricate machines with wings which shall beat the air as fast as those of the cockchafer. This sounds extravagant, but I have seen an electric pile fixed in a stand with glass feet, which caused a little hammer to beat thousands of times in a second: and surely the hammer could have been made to communicate its movement to a small wing! Forgive me this little castle in the air! The idea came into my head a long while ago, and the cockchafer has just reminded me of ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... inane suggestions as to the sender. Phoebe said nothing. There was a frown on her face as she watched the captain get to work on the box with chisel and hammer. It contained a beautiful doll, fully and expensively dressed, and pinned to the dress was a card—"To dear little Emmie, ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... have had your pugilistic display in a publican's room in town, where you could have hammer-nailed and ding-donged to your heart's content for ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... The mast seemed to bend slightly and the stays were as taut as fiddle-strings. The boat quivered like a leaf. The waves pounded hard against the thin strakes of the boat's side. I could feel them on my cheek, though their dampness never penetrated; but in between these hammer blows their little pats were wonderfully friendly. Every now and then I could see the white frothing of the wave-crests above the gunwale, and sometimes under the sail the horizon was visible but, more often, there was nothing to be ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... islands, are actually prolongations of promontories of the mainland. Two main chains extend right across the sea—-the one through Scyros and Psara (between which shallow banks intervene) to Chios and the hammer-shaped promontory east of it; and the other running from the southeastern promontory of Euboea and continuing the axis of that island, in a southward curve through Andros, Tenos, Myconos, Nikaria and Samos. A third curve, from the south easternmost promontory of the Peloponnese through Cerigo, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... sparrow flew to tell his mates on the house, and you could hear the chatter they made about it right down at the brook. But the wren screamed loudest of all, and said that the goldfinch was a painted impostor, and had not got half so much gold as the yellow-hammer. So they were all scattered in a minute, and Bevis stood ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... fire, now rising, now falling, streamed through the open door. It sent a long vista of light through the blank and pulsating haze. The vibrations of the anvil were all but the only sounds on the air; the alternate thin clink of the smith's hand-hammer and the thick thud of the striker's sledge echoed in unseen ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... be free from suspicion and fear it is impossible to imagine. That such burdens should be borne at all is a wonder to those whose shoulders have never been broadened for such work;—as is the strength of the blacksmith's arm to men who have never wielded a hammer. Surely his whole life must have been a life of terrors! But of any special peril to which he was at that moment subject, or of any embarrassment which might affect the work of the evening, he knew nothing. He placed his wife in the drawing-room ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... on the door of his house, hoping that no one saw him. He raised his eyes, and through the outer blinds of one window came a gleam of light from his wife's room. Then, in the midst of his trouble, visions of her gentle life, spent with her children, beat upon his brain with the force of a hammer. The maid opened the door, which Diard hastily closed behind him with a kick. For a moment he breathed freely; then, noticing that he was bathed in perspiration, he sent the servant back to Juana and stayed in the darkness of the ...
— Juana • Honore de Balzac
... course, the gardens were full, in spite of the weather; for what must be the callousness of that man who could let the Gardens pass under the hammer of George Robins, without bidding them an affectionate farewell? Good gracious! we can hardly believe such insensibility does exist. Hasten then, dear readers, as you would fly to catch the expiring sigh of a fine old boon companion—hasten ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... it has begun to assert itself as a place of summer residence. Fifteen years ago private residences on Lake Tahoe might have been enumerated on the fingers of the two hands; now they number as many hundreds, and the sound of the hammer and saw is constantly heard, and dainty villas, bungalows, cottages, and rustic homes are springing up as ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... relate that this retired place, protected on the north by woods and mountains, was formerly an asylum. A few firm friends accompanied him. They were afterward known as Baldjunas, a name compared by Von Hammer with that of Mohadshirs, borne by the companions of Mahomet's early misfortunes. Two shepherds, named Kishlik and Badai, who had informed him of Wang Khan's march, were ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... that sad thing; But, ere he passed on, turned about at last And on the wondering guard a strange look cast, And said, "St. Mary! do such men as ye Fight with the wasters from across the sea? Then, certes, are ye lost, however good Your hearts may be; not such were those who stood Beside the Hammer-bearer years agone." So said he, and as his fair armour shone With beauty of a time long passed away, So with the music of another day His deep voice thrilled the ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... leaden touch," agreed Dorothy Arkwright. "The way you hammer out Mendelssohn is enough to try my nerves, so I'm sure it must be an ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... paused and rested on a gate, listening to the faint and indeterminate sounds of the night, through which came occasionally the barking of a distant dog like the beating of a trip hammer. ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... three feet long, and from twelve to fifteen inches wide, covered with felt or fearnaught, previously coated with tar or white lead; patches of sheet-lead, all with nail-holes punched; and trouser-slings for lowering men outside the vessel, to be provided with a pouch or pocket, to contain a hammer and nails. Tarred canvas or oakum should be prepared to shove into the shot-holes before the patches of board or lead are nailed on. Although shot-plugs are still to be allowed, the means just described are ...
— Ordnance Instructions for the United States Navy. - 1866. Fourth edition. • Bureau of Ordnance, USN
... still as the dead beside them till the light died. In the brief intervals of darkness they drove the stakes with muffled hammers, and ran the lengths of barbed wire between them. Heart in mouth they worked, one eye on the dimly seen hammer and stake-head, the other on the German trench, watching for the first upward trailing sparks of the flare. Plenty of men were hit of course, because, light or dark, the bullets were kept flying, but there was no pause in the work, not even to help the wounded in. If they were able to crawl ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... and they didn't have any peace at home, pore little motherless things. I ricollect one day little Jim come runnin' over to my house draggin' his wagon loaded up with all his playthings, his little saw and hammer and some nails the cyarpenters had give him when Old Man Bob had his new stable built, and says he, 'Aunt Jane, please let me keep my tools over here. Annie says she's goin' to throw 'em in the well, and pappy'll ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall
... prowess by its capture. For such a great, healthy man, his hair flourishing like Samson's, his arteries running buckets of red blood, to boast of these infinitesimal exploits, produced a feeling of disproportion in the world, as when a steam-hammer is set to cracking nuts. The other was a quiet, subdued person, blond and lymphatic and sad, with something the look of a Dane: "Tristes tetes de Danois!" as Gaston Lafenestre used ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that had not its horseshoe over the door. Another popular device for frightening away witches and fairies was to hang bunches of garlic about the farms. I have known a black-fishing expedition stopped because a "yellow yite," or yellow-hammer, hovered round the gang when they were setting out. Still more ominous was the "peat" when it appeared with one or three companions. An old rhyme about this bird runs—"One is joy, two is grief, three's a bridal, four is death." Such snatches of superstition are still to be heard amidst ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... our hours, and each gree is equal to 22-1/2 of our minutes.] These are measured, according to an ancient custom, by means of water, dropping from one small vessel into another, beside which there always stand servants appointed for the purpose, who strike with a hammer upon a concave plate of metal, like the inner portion of a plate, hung by a wire, thus denoting the pores and grees successively as they pass.[238] Like the mother and her seven sons, mentioned ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... platform, and one of our number was pushed forward until his head and shoulders protruded over the black chasm of the pit, from which a thin column of smoke was still rising. He was armed with a hammer, and with this he struck one of the metal guiders of the ruined cage, giving the pitman's "jowl" or signal, "three times three, and one over." Lying breathless, we listened, hoping for some response. ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... and impending taxes to a new country glowing with the deceptive greenness of far fields. The population had increased; the housing for it had not. So that rents went up and up until economic factors exerted their inexorable pressure and the tap of the carpenter's hammer and the ring of his saw began to sound in every city, in every suburb, on new farms and ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... unpacking his portmanteau and bag, declining his offer of help on the ground that she must get used to work and wished to do it all herself. She hung his clothes on nails which she discovered in the table drawer and knocked into the wall with the back of a hairbrush for want of a hammer. Then she arranged his linen in a little old chest of drawers standing in ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... this, Lee was preparing to retreat. Nothing blinded that clear vision—the eyes of the great chief pierced every mist. He saw the blow coming—the shadow of the Grant hammer as the weapon was lifted, ran before—on the 25th of March Lee's rapier made it last lunge. But when his adversary recoiled to avoid it, it was Lee who was going ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... he saw nothing of his victim. The flat slope and the leafy ground were free from anything resembling a human being. He stood peering from behind the tree, and at his wit's end to know what it meant. He held his rifle so that the hammer could be raised the moment the necessity came, and he must have felt that the wiser course was for him to leave the ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... to the little gold-lacquered clock on the mantel-piece. "See, it is going to strike," she said. As she spoke, the little silver hammer softly struck. "That is the clock-time, but what time is it really—for ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... adorned with life-sized rusty iron knights in complete armor. The clock-face on the front of the building is very large and of curious pattern. Ordinarily, a gilded angel strikes the hour on a big bell with a hammer; as the striking ceases, a life-sized figure of Time raises its hour-glass and turns it; two golden rams advance and butt each other; a gilded cock lifts its wings; but the main features are two great angels, who stand on each side of the dial ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... realized what he intended he had thrown his gun to his shoulder, and aiming point-blank at Tarzan pulled the trigger. But the Englishman was close to him—so close that his hand reached the leveled barrel a fraction of a second before the hammer fell upon the cartridge, and the bullet that was intended for Tarzan's heart ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs |
