"Hob" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... as they were within doors the Minister placed his trembling companion in the old leathern chair in his little sanctum, made up the fire, and poured him out a glass of whisky with hot water from the kettle that was opportunely ready on the hob. ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... nightly work, and put up a very fair imitation of Doctor Richard Livingstone. But hidden away was a heart that behaved in a highly unprofessional manner, and sang and dreamed, and jumped at the sight of a certain small figure on the street, and generally played hob with systole and diastole, and the vagus and accelerator nerves. Which are all any doctor really knows about the heart, until he falls ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the bargain that we are never to commit trespasses. The bargain is that if we would be forgiven we must forgive them that trespass against us. Nor again is it part of the bargain that we are to let a man hob-nob with us when we know him to be a thorough blackguard, merely on the plea that unless we do so we shall not be forgiving him his trespasses. No hard and fast rule can be laid down, each case must be settled instinctively as ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... were, and leaning over sadly. It stood on a sharp bleak corner, where that tempestuous wind Euroclydon kept up a worse howling than ever it did about poor Paul's tossed craft. Euroclydon, nevertheless, is a mighty pleasant zephyr to any one in-doors, with his feet on the hob quietly toasting for bed. "In judging of that tempestuous wind called Euroclydon," says an old writer—of whose works I possess the only copy extant—"it maketh a marvellous difference, whether thou lookest out at it from a glass window where the frost is all on the outside, ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... the presence of his lordship. So the tall footman, without further ceremony, took Clare by the arm, and hurried him up a marble staircase, through innumerable passages, and a maze of halls and corridors which quite bewildered the poor poet. The sound of his heavy hob-nailed shoes on the polished floor made him tremble, no less than the sight of his mud-bespattered garments among all the splendid upholstery, through which the gorgeous lackey was guiding his steps. At last, after a transit through painted halls which seemed endless, ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... impertinence, but he was too proud a man to notice it otherwise than by quietly incorporating the offender into his satire. "But the enigma is why you read them with a stripling, of whose breeding we have just had a specimen—mathematics with a hob-ba-de-hoy? Grand Dieu! Do pray tell us, Mr. Dodd, why you come to Font Abbey every day; is it really to teach Master Orson mathematics ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... "Why, thou hob thrust, no good can come where thy fingers are a-meddling; there is another jade besides mine own tied to the rack, not worth a groat. Dost let thy neighbours lift my oats and provender? Better turn my mill into a spital for horses, and nourish ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... you through your dining-room windows. You were hob-nobbing with Captain Blackbeard. You looked rosy and well. You smiled. You drank off the champagne at a ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... walked into the kitchen, and sat himself down on the hob, with the top of his cap accommodated up the chimney, for it was a great deal too high ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various
... dear, do not worry too much about your father's situation. At the very moment you are worrying he may be eating supper, or hob-nobbing with a party of very courteous and hospitable ranch owners, or fishing in a neighboring brook where the trout are as hungry as shoats at feeding time, ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... certain smart, well-set-up officer named Miassoyedeff, a colonel stationed at Wirballen on the East Prussia frontier, and who had received gracious invitations from the Kaiser to go shooting and to hob-nob with him. This man afterwards became a spy of Germany, as I will ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux
... arrangements were all put into working order, his fire blazing, his coffee boiling on the hob, and his table laid, he sank back in his chair with a weary sigh, his hand idly stroking the cat, which had jumped purring on his knee. It seemed lonely without Stephen, and he foresaw that probably many evenings would ...
— A Girl of the Klondike • Victoria Cross
... flagged kitchen, with its joints of bacon and its bunches of dried herbs, hanging from the low beamed ceiling, its wide hob grate, its dresser, table and chairs of old Westmorland oak, every article in it shining with elbow-grease,—she saw that Mrs. Grayson looked particularly tired ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... more "thoroughly wide awake" than any one of his years in the three kingdoms. The quartette was completed by Mr. Frederick Coleman, a small lad, with a round merry face, who was perched on the back of a chair, with his feet resting on the hob, and his person so disposed as effectually to screen every ray of fire ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... not at all help to quiet my apprehensions. In one corner of the room into which we were shown, stood a bedstead. Implements of cookery were scattered negligently about the floor, and on a huge hob bubbled a huge saucepan. The presence of salt-herrings and other dried fish, the common Norwegian diet, could, by no art, be concealed. The ceiling was so low, that I could hardly stand upright with my hat on; and the floor being strewed with juniper leaves, the smell of which, though not ungrateful ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... peering within, 'Midst a rattle of glasses and knife and fork din, His victims beheld, tucking in calipash, While they hob-nobb'd and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... there who would like to see him, Mr. PUNCHINELLO took a trip to the aforesaid springs. He found it charming there. There was such a chance to study character. From the parlors where Chief-Justice CHASE and General LEE were hob-nobbing over apple-toddies and "peach-and-honey," to the cabins where the wards of the nation were luxuriating in picturesque ease beneath the shade of their newly-fledged angel of liberty, everything was ...
— Punchinello Vol. 1, No. 21, August 20, 1870 • Various
... The silence of the single little street, with its one-storied, thatched or tiled cottages, is at infrequent intervals broken by an elderly dame in her sabots, or by a creaking, rickety village cart driven by a farmer-boy in blouse and hob-nailed shoes. The largest inhabited building is the mairie, a modern structure, at one end of which is the village school, where fifteen or twenty urchins enjoy the instructions of the worthy teacher. A stone church, ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... unselfish, be he old or young, rested or weary; and such being the case, the foreign day-laborer, in blue blouse and hob-nailed boots, who rises and gives a lady his place in car or omnibus, is the superior of the several-times-a-millionaire, in finest broadcloth, spotless linen, patent leathers and silk hat, who sits still, taking refuge behind ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... made Vermichel as formidable in appearance as he was meek in reality. His prominent nose looked like an interrogation-mark, to which the wide-slit mouth seemed to be always answering, even when it did not open. Vermichel, a short man, wore hob-nail shoes, bottle-green velveteen trousers, an old waistcoat patched with diverse stuffs which seemed to have been originally made of a counterpane, a jacket of coarse blue cloth and a gray hat with a broad brim. All this luxury, required by the town of Soulanges ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... 'little essentials' I am forgetting!" Durtal put the teakettle on the hob and placed cups, teapot, sugar bowl, cakes, bonbons, and tiny liqueur glasses on an old lacquered "waiter" so as to have everything on hand when it ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... Mere Angelique Arnauld, Englishwomen of the Stuart age ventured upon no incursions into philosophy, fiction, or theology. More and more eagerly, however, they read books; and as a consequence of reading, they began at last to write. The precious Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle, hob-a-nobbed with every Muse in her amazing divagations. But the earliest professional woman of letters was Aphra Behn, the novelist and playwright, to whose genius justice has only quite lately been done by Mr. Montague Summers. Mrs. Behn died in 1689, and it seemed at first that she had ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... Bilby and the boatman, they reached toward the roof of the cavern hastily. There was no hesitation on their part. Although Copley was alone, his unwavering attitude and the threat of the automatic pistol, played hob with such shreds of courage as the ...
— Ruth Fielding on the St. Lawrence - The Queer Old Man of the Thousand Islands • Alice B. Emerson
... and made the tea, and put the teapot on the hob. She peeped again into the BOTTOM oven, the pie had become a lovely brown, and it ...
— The Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter • Beatrix Potter
... something still stranger, for there was the table all spread ready for breakfast—better than that indeed, for the breakfast itself was ready. There was a beautiful, big, wheaten loaf, and a roll of butter, a treat they seldom tasted, and a great bowl full of milk, and on the hob by the fire stood the coffee-pot, and it was many a day since that had been used, with the steam coming out at its spout, and the nice smell of fresh ground berries fit ...
— Miss Mouse and Her Boys • Mrs. Molesworth
... pun'gent for'est prod'uct ful'crum rus'tic hob'by prob'lem hud'dle rub'bish loft'y ros'ter pub'lic sulk'y log'ic tor'rent pub'lish sul'try af'flux bank'rupt kin'dred scrib'ble am'bush cam'phor pick'et trip'let an'them hav'oc tick'et trick'le an'nals hag'gard wick'et liz'ard as'pect ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... because there is no rent day, they have no tenants, their houses are idle. Others worry because their tenants are not to their liking, are destructive, careless, or neglect the flowers and the lawn, or allow the children to batter the furniture, walk in hob nails over the hardwood floors, or scratch the paint off the walls. Men in high position worry lest their superiors are not as fully appreciative of their efforts as they should be, and they in turn worry their subordinates ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... while got out of his variously-colored, waltzing and albino hybrids, a brown mouse. It wasn't a common house mouse, either, but a wild mouse unlike any he had ever seen. It ran away, and bit and gnawed, and raised hob. It was what we breeders call a Mendelian segregation of genetic factors that had been in the waltzers and albinos all the time—their original wild ancestor of the woods and fields. If Jim turns out to be a Brown Mouse, he may be ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick
... saddle once again the knight of Mancha rose, and in his hand far balancing his lance, full tilt against the troops of bulls opposing run. And thou, shrill Crillitrilkril, than whom no cricket e'er on hob of rural cottage, or chimney black, more gladsome turned his merry note, e'en thou didst perish, shrieking gave the ghost in empty air, the sport of every wind; for e'en that heart so jocund and so gay was pierced, harsh spitted ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... from me it was." W. Keyse rescued the kettle, restored it to the hob, returned to his place, and shook his finger at her warningly. "And if you go to remind me as wot 'e were drunk when 'e done wot 'e did——" He looked ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... owlets through the long blue night Are shouting to each other still: Fond lovers, yet not quite hob nob, They lengthen out the tremulous sob, That echoes far ...
— Lyrical Ballads, With Other Poems, 1800, Vol. I. • William Wordsworth
... declared that it was harder for a camel to enter the kingdom of heaven than for a human being to thread the eye of a needle. Another time, telling them of the glory of the angels, he explained that angels had stars set in their heels instead of hob-nails. Good and simple teaching, well fitted for settlers in the wilds; the schoolmaster in the village would have laughed at it all, but Isak's boys found good use for it in their inner life. They were trained and taught for their own little world, and what could be better? In the autumn, ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... free-thinkers have an excellent time of it, and, to use a fashionable phrase, 'do themselves very well indeed.' They move freely in society; their books lie on every table; they hob-a-nob with Bishops; and when they come to die, their orthodox relations gather round them, and lay them in the earth 'in the sure and certain hope'—so, at least, priestly lips are found willing to assert—'of ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... failed to notice them, even in the prominence of their box. But that they had distinguished him showed how familiar and striking a figure he was. He wondered, too, why they should have invited him to hob-nob with them. He was not of their set. Indeed, like many very eminent men, he was not to any degree in anybody's set. Of one thing he was sure—because he had read it on the self-conscious faces of all three of them—namely, that they had been discussing ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... than an oblong garret; but along one side mouse-coloured curtains fell to the ground in folds from the angle where the sloping roof met the wall; on the other a cheerful fire glowed from a hearth of white tiles and a kettle sang merrily upon the hob. A broad couch, piled with silk cushions occupied the far end beneath the window, and the feet sank with a delicate pleasure into a thick velvety carpet. In the centre a small inlaid table of cedar wood held a silver tea-service. The candlesticks ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... polished with much loving labour: the shining grate: the foolish china dogs and the little china house between them on the mantelpiece. The fire was burning brightly, and the kettle was singing on the hob. ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... spoonful of milk. The odour of Cloves is aromatic, and the taste pleasantly hot, but acrid. Half a tumbler of quite hot water poured over half a dozen Cloves (which are to brew for a few minutes on the hob, and then to be taken out), will often secure a good night to a restless dyspeptic patient, if taken just before getting into bed. Or if given cold before breakfast this dose will obviate constipation. In Holland the oil of Cloves is prescribed with cinchona bark for ague. Arthur Cecil's ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... notwithstanding the unsatisfied feeling at her heart, rather pleased with herself. She entered the room she called the nursery, and it looked cheerful and bright. Old nurse had had the fire lit, and was sitting by it. A kettle steamed on the hob, and nurse's cup and saucer and teapot, and some bread and butter and cakes, were spread on the table. But as Sibyl came in the sense of satisfaction which she had felt for a moment or two dropped away from her like a mantle, and she ...
— Daddy's Girl • L. T. Meade
... the Big M Ranch is going to be in a whirl of excitement, fellows. I've noticed that somehow we seem to stir up things wherever we go; not that we mean to have things happen, but they just pick out such a time to play hob," said Jerry, shaking his head as ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen
... know, but it's for no good, you may be sure. If he isn't here he's hob-nobbing with those gipsy wretches who have a camp on Southberry Common. Mother Jael and he ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... the traveller in the valleys must be prepared to "rough it" a little. I was directed to bring with me only a light knapsack, a pair of stout hob-nailed shoes, a large stock of patience, and a small parcel of insect powder. The knapsack and the shoes I found exceedingly useful, indeed indispensable; but I had very little occasion to draw upon either my stock of patience or insect powder. The French are ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... open to three-year-olds and upward, and run over a distance—two miles and a half. The distance kept out the sprinters—it also, now and again, played hob with racing idols. To win a horse must be able to go—also to stay. With twenty thousand of added money, there was sure to be always a long list of entries. The conditions held one curious survival from the original fixture—namely, ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... ever when I took that in. I made a little move, and this funny old man must have heard me—he looked like one of them silly little critters that play hob with Rip Van Winkle out on the mountain before he goes to sleep. And he cocks his ears this way and that; then he jumped to his feet, and I come forward where he could see me. And darned if he didn't up ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... a hob-nailed shoe, He stirred into his pottage; Some Irish stew, a pound of glue, A high ...
— The Magic Pudding • Norman Lindsay
... open hearth could be prevented. Sussex backs gave place in time to the grate in which a metal back was frequently incorporated, flanked by the dogs in front. Then came the closed-in grates and the hob-registers of the eighteenth century, many being designed after the beautiful ornamentation produced by the Adam Brothers; also the decorative metal work enriched with ormolu and brass, which in due course again gave way to the plain and oftentimes ugly register ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess
... degrees instead of being over a hundred. All these women and girls were beautiful, all had charm, all were more or less ravishing—simply because for days we had been living in a harsh masculine world—a world of motor- lorries, razors, trousers, hob-nailed boots, maps, discipline, pure reason, and excessively few mirrors. An interesting item of the laundry was a glass-covered museum of lousy shirts, product of prolonged trench-life in the earlier part of the war, and held by experts to surpass ...
— Over There • Arnold Bennett
... expression in utter perfection. (It's been in People of Position, Mayfair Murmurs, and several other weeklies.) I'm standing in my potato-patch (my Allotment toilette is finished off by a pair of enthralling little hob-nailed boots!) and I'm holding a rake and a hoe and a digging-fork in one hand and a garden-hose in the other; there's a wheel-barrow beside me, and I'm looking at the potato-plants with the true Allotment smile, my dearest. I ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 20, 1917 • Various
... money, a kind heart and scarcely any brains. He was an ideal choice, everybody was agreed upon that. The fellow that Constance was really in love with at the time, Jimmy Gordon, was a friend of your father's. Well, the gentle Arthur went to pieces financially a good many years ago. He played hob with all the calculations, and so we find Constance, his wife, lamenting in the graveyard of her hopes and cursing Jimmy Gordon for his unfaithfulness in marrying before he was in a position to do so. If Jimmy had remained single for twelve years longer than he did, I daresay Arthur's ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... spoons which had been left in the room on the previous evening are gone,—the window is open, and you observe the mark of a dirty hand on the window-frame, and perhaps, in addition to that, you notice the impress of a hob-nailed shoe on the gravel outside. All these phenomena have struck your attention instantly, and before two minutes have passed you say, "Oh, somebody has broken open the window, entered the room, and run off with the spoons and the tea-pot!" That speech ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... Degree Examinations. Many a young man of his year whose hob-nailed shoes Pen had derided, and whose face or coat he had caricatured—many a man whom he had treated with scorn in the lecture-room or crushed with his eloquence in the debating-club—many of his own set who had not half his brains, but a ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... round breakfast rolls—and whiter still the table-cloth on which they were laid; and merrily sang the kettle on the hob, as the white steam ...
— The Crown of Success • Charlotte Maria Tucker
... the clock struck the hour Bridgie paid a flying visit to the little sitting-room to see that the tea-table was set, the kettle on the hob, the dish of hot scones on the brass stand in the fender, and everything ready to hand, so that no one need enter unless specially summoned. She found Pixie standing gazing into the fire, and ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... men of air, of fire, of water, naturally mingle with men of earth; where flying horses and talking fishes are utterly realistic; where King and Prince meet fisherman and pauper, lamia and cannibal; where citizen jostles Badawi, eunuch meets knight; the Kazi hob-nobs with the thief; the pure and pious sit down to the same tray with the pander and the procuress; where the professional religionist, the learned Koranist, and the strictest moralist consort with the wicked magician, the scoffer, and the debauchee-poet like Abu Nowas; where the courtier jests ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... his powerful knack of eloquence, to the wonder of the whole company, sold Cave's Lives of the Fathers to Solomon the Magnificent, and the Scotch Directory to the Priests of the Sun; nay, he sold-Archbishop Laud's Life to Hugh Peters, Hob's Leviathan to Pope Boniface, and pop'd Bunyan's Works upon Bellarmine for a piece of unrevealed Divinity; After the sale was over, I took an opportunity of making myself known to him, who caressed me with all the freedom imaginable, asking me, how long I had been in these parts? and what news ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... so after the second act of the drama, I go to my dressing-room and arrange my 'make-up' for the Cubanised Yankee. Agreeably to the Cuban notion of American costume, I don a suit of dark-coloured winter clothing, together with a red flannel shirt, heavy hob-nailed boots, and an engineer's broad-peaked cap. Similarly, I apply cosmetic to my hair, which I comb flat and lank; I rouge my cheeks and nose plentifully with crimson colour, attach a thick tuft of hair to my chin, and with the aid of burnt cork give to my naturally ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... he a cold, cast-iron man, like Flint? or a simple, sorrowful one, like Snarle that was? But this last idea melted of itself. How could the famous publisher resemble the poor, unobtrusive Snarle? He, Mr. Hardwill, who received notes from the great Hiawatha, and hob-nobbed with Knickerbocker Irving; he, who owned a phial of yellow sand, which had been taken from a scorching desert with an unpronounceable name, and presented to him by the Oriental Bayard; he, who chatted with genial Mr. Sparrow-grass—God ...
— Daisy's Necklace - And What Came of It • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... thing the public will permit you to do. But I shan't tell for my part—make yourself easy. Clarence, don't you let it out; your mother, fortunately, is out of the way. The world shall never know through me that young Northcote, the anti-state Churchman, was discovered hob-nobbing with a snug chaplain in a sinecure appointment. Ha, ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... muttered Vane, as he went to the door which, as there was no sign of Distin now, and he did not want any biscuits, he passed, and hurried along the street to where Michael Chakes sat in his open window, tapping away slowly at the heavy sole of a big boot which he was ornamenting with rows of hob-nails. ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... dozen of these were smashed. They're along similar lines as the watertight compartments of steamships. Some auto tires are made the same way too. But if a bomb was dropped on top of the gas bag, I reckon the explosion would play hob with the whole business." ...
— The Boy Scouts on Belgian Battlefields • Lieut. Howard Payson
... neighbour is a good thump on the back, and his salutation commonly some blunt curse.] He thinks nothing to be vices, but pride and ill husbandry, from which he will gravely dissuade the youth, and has some thrifty hob-nail proverbs to clout his discourse. He is a niggard all the week, except only market-day, where, if his corn sell well, he thinks he may be drunk with a good conscience. His feet never stink so unbecomingly as when he trots after a lawyer in Westminster-hall, and even cleaves ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... should see they were drinking. Even Worse himself would not have wished Madame Torvestad to find him hob-nobbing with the young man, and comprehending the position of affairs, he winked amiably at Lauritz, as he conducted Madame Torvestad to a seat upon ...
— Skipper Worse • Alexander Lange Kielland
... and I hob and nob," said the first-lieutenant. They did so, and clicked their glasses together with such force as to break them both, and spill the wine upon the fine damask table-cloth. Jerry could contain himself no longer, but burst out into a roar of laughter, to the astonishment ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... doctor, smiling at his patient, as if after a long search he had found the ill which troubled him, and pulled it up by the roots. "Take that chair, my dear Poynter," he continued, pointing to one by the fire, where a bright copper kettle was on the hob, and closing the door, while his patient took off his hat, glanced round the room, and blew the dust off the top of a side table before ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn
... nice a word to use when talking about the pranks of that combination. Ward, he supplies some of the brains, and all of the hard plunks; while that bully, Ted Slavin, does the work, or gets some of his cronies to do it for him. Now, I wonder if they'll try to come aboard here, and play hob with our stuff, like they did once before when we were all ready to hike ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren
... all eat in another room, six feet by eight feet, three of us have our mattress on the floor and one more in a small room by himself. Most of the rooms lead out of the kitchen. In the kitchen most of the servants and a few other men hob-nob with Madame and her buxom daughter, who are Belgian refugees, and who are very agreeable and don't seem to mind us over-running the whole place, and soldiers coming in to their kitchen, where they live, in all stages of dishabile, to buy huge bowls of coffee at 1d. each. The General ...
— Letters from France • Isaac Alexander Mack
... five minutes," she announced. "I hope you've finished all that rubbishing talk. There's some tea in the tea-pot on the hob, if you want any. ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... ably and gallantly backed up by the maid-of-all-work, who was evidently convinced that the main duty and occupation of such functionaries is to upset everything; to clatter up and down the rooms in hob-nail boots; to flourish her mop in her master's and mistress's faces, and otherwise assert her noble independence of the ordinary laws governing domestic servants. In these ambitions she succeeded to a moral; and when, in addition, thanks to the cold in her head, she pronounced ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... before eleven o'clock and never settled down to work before three o'clock. The interim was spent in puttering over the exchanges, gossiping with visitors, of whom he had a constant stream, quizzing every other member of the staff, meddling here, chaffing there, and playing hob generally with the orderly routine of affairs. He was a persistent, insistent, irrepressible disturber of everything but the good-fellowship of the office, to which he was the chief contributor. No interruption from Field ever came or was taken amiss. From the hour he ambled ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... Sparks and I hob-nobbed across the table and looked unspeakable things at each other; the girls held down their heads; Mrs. Dal wiped her eyes; and the major pronounced himself the happiest father ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... she was now a fixture. Then it was that old Mr. Jollyboy beamed with benevolence, until the old lady sometimes thought the fire was going to melt him; then it was that the tea-kettle sang on the hob like a canary; and then it was that Barney bustled about the room preparing the evening meal, and talking all the time with the most perfect freedom to any one who chose to listen to him. Yes, seven p.m. was ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... dress, consisting of a sort of Yoppe, or Austrian jacket of grey homespun, with green collar and facings, and buttons of rough stag-horn, homespun breeches, cut off above the knees, which are left entirely uncovered, thick woollen stockings rolled below the knee, and heavy, hob-nailed, laced boots. The head gear is that known in this country as the Tyrolese hat, adorned by a chamois beard, which is inserted between ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... While Hob the smith with sturdy arm Circleth the feigned maid; And, spite of Jack's assumed alarm, Busseth his lips, like a lover warm, And will not ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... every inch of it could be seen. It had been all raked over, and there, just out of the ground, growing up in mustard-and-cress letters as long as my arm, I saw 'This genteel residence to let, lately occupied by N. Swan, Esq.' I took my hob-nailed boots to them last words, and I promise you I made the ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... the islanders have become somewhat demoralized under the changed conditions of life, and that not a small proportion of them have grown venal and grasping. The happy old days when artists and inn-keepers, peasants and such chance visitors as loved the simple unsophisticated life, hob-nobbed together on terms of equality are gone for ever. Fashion, that merciless deity, has annexed the Insula Caprearum to her ever-growing dominions;—there are smart villas on the Tragara road and even at Ana-Capri; ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... the dogs that demoralised Quintana. He'd had no experience with hunting hounds,—did not know what to expect,—how to manoeuvre. If only he could have seen these beasts that filled the forest with their hob-goblin outcries—if he could have had a good look at the creatures who gave forth that weird, crazed, melancholy volume ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... capable of supplying almost anything likely to be needed in the depths of the country; you could purchase there bread, cakes, groceries, hob-nailed boots, paper, ink, and most ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... first step—and she went on, and on, and on, until that which at first she loathed became no longer disagreeable, and by degrees grew into a craving that was irresistible;—and, at last, she regularly hob-and-nobb'd' with the disconsolate rib of Stubbs, and shared alike in all her troubles ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... dissented the sergeant. "The foot is too small, for one thing; and then the nails are not regular hob-nails. They're a good deal smaller; and a labourer's boots would have the nails all round the edges, and there would be iron tips on the heels, and probably on the toes too. Now these have got no tips, and the nails are arranged in a pattern ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... Thus, at hob and nob with the civilities and honors and embraces of this social life, the Negro felt an unaccustomed giddiness seize him. This giddiness was not caused by lack of social poise, nor incited by the French, but it arose from the dilemma, or rather peril, in which the French intercourse placed him ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... immoderately, may be applied without fear of evil consequences. For chapped hands and lips the following will be found efficacious: Equal quantities of white wax (wax candle) and sweet oil; dissolve in these a small piece of camphor; put it in a jam crock, and place it upon the hob till melted. It must be kept closely covered. It should be applied to the hands after washing, ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... a precipitate of iodide of silver is formed. Place the bottle containing this mixture in a saucepan of hot water, keep it on the hob for about twelve hours, shake it occasionally, now and then removing the stopper. The bath is now perfectly saturated with iodide of silver; when cold, filter through ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 193, July 9, 1853 • Various
... lifted his white fluted china tea-cup, which had queer little chintz-like bunches of flowers over it and a worn gilt handle, and took a pinch of tea from the caddy; then, pouring some boiling water over it, he set it on the hob to steep. ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... entitling me to aspire. It was a sharp but wholesome lesson to my vanity and pride, to find myself, so soon as deprived of my factitious advantage of inherited wealth, less able to provide for my commonest wants than the fustian-coated mechanic and hob-nailed labourer, whom I had been wont to splash with my carriage-wheel and despise as an inferior race of beings. Bitter were my reflections, great was my perplexity, during the month succeeding my sudden change of fortune. I passed whole days lying upon the bed in ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... Naglee, or of some other name, appointed by Halleck, sustained by Lincoln, and by, who knows whom—commands in Norfolk. This general so appointed, and so sustained is the most devoted worshipper of slavery. This favored general hob-nobs with the slave-making, slave-breeding and slave-selling aristocracy of Norfolk and of the vicinity, looks down upon the nigger with all the haughtiness of a plantation whip, and haughtily snubs off the not slave-breeding Union men ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... at the chimney-jamb! And hob-nailed boots on the hearth below, And the house cat curls in a slumber calm, And the eight-day clock ticks loud and slow; When the harsh broom-handle jabs the ceil 'Neath the kitchen-loft, and the drowsy brain Sniffs the breath of the ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... said Adrian, resuming his walk. "Can you actually suppose that I 've passed all these golden days and weeks in friendly hob-nobbings with her, and not learned that she came from the island of Sampaolo? A fellow of penetration, like me? I appeal to your ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... heretofore known nothing. The evening had fallen chill outside, but here all was warm and light and cheerful, and the warmth and cheer seemed to be embodied in the person of the woman who moved quickly to and fro, stirring the fire, putting the kettle on the hob (for those were the days of the open fire, of crane and kettle, and picturesque, if not convenient, housekeeping), drawing a chair up near the cheerful blaze. Marie felt herself enfolded with comfort. A shawl was thrown over her shoulders; she was lifted like a child, and placed in the chair by ...
— Marie • Laura E. Richards
... bore pot-holes on mountain-tops, there must have been a valley there. Some great cataclysm took place. For that cataclysm nature must be held responsible mainly. But what prompted nature to raise hob with Westchester County millions of years ago, and to let it sleep like Rip Van Winkle ever since? Nature isn't a freak. She is depicted as a woman, but in spite of that she is not whimsical. She does not act upon ...
— The Idiot • John Kendrick Bangs
... captain of Springhaven, sternly. "I think you had better call your Moosoo Jacks 'Master Jackass,' or 'Master Jackanapes,' and put your own name on the back of him. You been with a Frenchman hob and nobbing, and you don't even know how they pronounce themselves, unchristian as it is to do so. 'Jarks' were his name, the very same as Navy beef, and a common one in that country. But to speak of any Carne coming nigh us with French plottings, and of prawns landing here at ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... and on carpet consideration; but he is a devil in private brawl: souls and bodies hath he divorc'd three; and his incensement at this moment is so implacable that satisfaction can be none but by pangs of death and sepulchre. Hob, nob, is his word; ...
— Twelfth Night; or, What You Will • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]
... drawing-room to the library at the end of the house. The library was almost the only surviving portion of the old manor-house of Bellomont: a long spacious room, revealing the traditions of the mother-country in its classically-cased doors, the Dutch tiles of the chimney, and the elaborate hob-grate with its shining brass urns. A few family portraits of lantern-jawed gentlemen in tie-wigs, and ladies with large head-dresses and small bodies, hung between the shelves lined with pleasantly-shabby books: books mostly contemporaneous with ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... but no well-known footstep, or dearly loved voice, disturbed our lonely vigil. The kettle simmered drowsily on the hob; Mrs. Arthur, tired out with impatient fretting at her son's delay, had thrown her apron over her head, and was sobbing bitterly. I began to feel alarmed; a strange fear seemed growing upon my heart, which almost led me to doubt the evidence of my senses—to fancy, ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... smiling blandly at the result of her diplomacy. It was probably the first effort of the kind the poor lady had ever made, and she was so elated by her success that she took Beth into her confidence, and forgave her outright in order to hob-nob with her on ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... said Richard, placing himself in front of the fire, putting his feet on the hob, and stroking his curls with an air which seemed to imply that whatever he was put ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... for great nieces,' she snapped, than for little ones.' And she continued to tussle with the broomstick and took no further notice of me. Then I went into the Hovel, where a fire burned on the hearth, and I took out my tools and fashioned a bit on the hob; and when it was ready I took it to her and said, This will teach it its manners'; and she put the bit on the broom, which became as docile as a lamb. Great-Niece,' said she, it appears that I told you a lie this morning. What can I do ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... Feelings he had never known streamed in upon him as from an ethereal casement, an unwonted tenderness, an embracing humour, a consciousness of some ineffable glory, an irradiation of the features of humanity. All this was in the bosom of the boy, and through it all the vision of an actual hob-nail Tom, coarse, unkempt, open from ear to ear; whose presence was a finger of shame to him and an oppression of clodpole; yet toward whom he felt just then a loving-kindness beyond what he felt for any living creature. He laughed at him, and wept over him. He prized him, while he shrank ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... she wondered what the wretched woman had to say. It occurred to her that the kettle was simmering on the hob in the kitchen, and that she might easily steam open the envelope and master its contents. However, her doing this would have in no way affected the course of the tragedy. And so the gods (being to-day in a strictly artistic mood) prompted her to ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... to the animals and cursing sounded from the depths of the stables. A faint sound of bells gave evidence of harnessing, and became presently a clear and continuous jingle timed by the movement of the beast, now stopping, now going on again with a brisk shake, and accompanied by the dull tramp of hob-nailed sabots. ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... were by ourselves he told me, 'Forty years ago, Sir, I was in love with an actress here, Mrs. Emmet, who acted Flora, in Hob in the Well.' What merit this lady had as an actress, or what was her figure, or her manner, I have not been informed: but, if we may believe Mr. Garrick, his old master's taste in theatrical merit was by no means refined; he was not an elegans formarum spectator. Garrick used to tell, ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... with a visor fore and aft matched his roomy knickerbockers, and canvas leggings encased his rounded calves. His hob-nailed shoes were the latest thing in "field boots," and his hunting coat was a credit to the sporting house that had turned it out. His cartridge belt was new and squeaky, and he had the last patents ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... much closer than we have ridden before, and left the Colonel's orderly and Hale in a bit of a valley with Minotaur, Jezebel, Hob, and Tank. Tank is a new mare I've got. Hale was riding her, as I never take Swallow closer than ...
— Letters to Helen - Impressions of an Artist on the Western Front • Keith Henderson
... were to get wise to what we are really after up here on this mountain, Mr. Crow," said he, "it would play hob with everything. If it gets out that we are after gold—why, the price of land would be ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... idyllic attractions did not balance the drawback of living in the thoroughfare of the house. Nor could one fail to sympathise with those who preferred the garret, a poor thing but their own, in which two studious souls could hob-nob, or even the austere whitewash, narrow skylight, and niggard dimensions of some monastic cell, which held just the one student, his table, and his books. The editor of the School Magazine, writing a month after our arrival, finds it "a queer new feeling to do the old work in a strange ...
— Uppingham by the Sea - a Narrative of the Year at Borth • John Henry Skrine
... Probably it was to them merely a mart where they brought their fruits to sell, and where they tarried for a few hours at most, leaving the streets still silent, the houses still asleep. It gave him pleasure to watch them as they went by. Rude as they were, with their heavy, hob-nailed shoes, and their awkward gait, they brought a little of a ready with them. He felt that they had lived with Nature, and that she had taught them peace. He envied them all that ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde
... pipe— for aw knaw tha'rt reight fond ov a rick,— An' tha'll find a drop o' hooarm-brew'd i' that pint up o'th' hob, aw dar say; An' nah, wol tha'rt toastin thi shins, just scale th' foir, an' aw'll side thi owd stick, Then aw'll tell thi some things 'ats happen'd sin tha ...
— Yorkshire Ditties, Second Series - To which is added The Cream of Wit and Humour - from his Popular Writings • John Hartley
... in silk attire, who made his appearance whenever the brigand, a ferocious-looking ruffian, was absent. The lady made piteous appeals to the audience for sympathy, greatly exciting the feelings of many of them, though Tom and I were much inclined to laugh when we saw the brigand and the lover hob-nobbing with each other behind a side scene, which, by some mischance, had not been shoved forward enough. At length the young count and the brigand met, and had a tremendous fight, which ended in the death of the former, who was dragged off the stage. Soon afterwards, ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... heels: "Alas, his brain was dizzy. "At length upon his feet he gets, "Hobgoblin fumes, Hobgoblin frets; "And as again he forward sets, "And through the bushes scrambles, "A stump doth hit him in his pace, "Down comes poor Hob upon his face, "And lamentably tore his case "Among the ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... hob or nob with me? a question formerly in fashion at polite tables, signifying a request or challenge to drink a glass of wine with the proposer: if the party challenged answered Nob, they were to chuse whether white or red. This foolish custom is said to have originated in the days of good ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... click-click of a machine inside. Knocking at the door the writing ceased, and I was bidden to enter. The room was but meagrely furnished, and showed scant signs of prosperity. On a small side-table, clean, but uncovered, the breakfast dishes, washed, but not yet put away, stood, and the kettle on the hob by the dying fire led me to infer that the typewriting woman was her own cook. I suspected that the awkward-looking sofa which partly occupied one side of the room, concealed a bed. By the lone front ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... to go into public-houses with them, but she wouldn't. She said that SHE wanted to come home. But why didn't she? The teacher let it pass, and hoped she'd gain strength of character by-and-bye. He had waited up late the night before with her supper on the hob; and he and his wife had been anxious for fear something had happened to the poor girl who was under their care. He had walked to the treacherous river-ford several times during the evening, and waited there for her. So perhaps ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... They broke out of their cages and they're raising hob! Come on! Come on! Never again will I lighter a cargo of live stock of ...
— Frank and Andy Afloat - The Cave on the Island • Vance Barnum
... piano stood open by one of the walls and a violin lay carelessly on a chair not far off. There were piles of new music and some tempting, small, neatly bound books lying about. A fire glowed on the hearth and a little brass kettle sang merrily on the hob. The cocoa-table was drawn up in front of the fire and on a quaintly shaped tray stood the bright little cocoa-pot and the oddly devised cups ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... perhaps, forget befel you, By way of horary inspection, 985 Which some account our worst erection. With that he circles draws, and squares, With cyphers, astral characters; Then looks 'em o'er, to und'erstand 'em, Although set down hob-nab, at random. 990 Quoth he, This scheme of th' heavens set, Discovers how in fight you met At Kingston with a may-pole idol, And that y' were bang'd both back and side well; And though you overcame the bear, 995 The dogs beat you at Brentford fair; Where ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... state; and the sheriffs are again sworn into office before the Barons of the Exchequer. The senior alderman below the chair (the next in rotation for Lord Mayor) cuts some sticks, delivers six horse-shoes, and counts sixty-one hob-nails, as suit and service for some lands held by the City under the Crown. The Barons are then invited to the banquet given by the sheriffs on their return to the City, at which the ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... day when he is a Multi-Millionaire I can still look down on him, for then I shall be a Master of Arts. I have known since Childhood that Education is more desirable than Paltry Gold. Although the Newspapers and the General Public do not seem to be with me to any Extent, it is better to hob-nob with the Binomial Theorem than to dally with ...
— People You Know • George Ade
... HOB'BEMA, MEINDERT, a famous Dutch landscape painter, born at Amsterdam; lived chiefly in his native town, and died in poverty; his fine, subdued pictures of woodland life and scenery are ranked amongst the masterpieces ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... "Hob Wright, Rafe Wood, John Pargetter, and thou Will Green, bestir ye and marshal the bowshot; and thou Nicholas Woodyer shall be under me Jack Straw in ordering of the staves. Gregory Tailor and John Clerk, fair and fine are ye clad in the arms of the ...
— A Dream of John Ball, A King's Lesson • William Morris
... sometimes when the lines have got chopped very short, the rhymes have tumbled overboard altogether. That is really what is meant by "impressionism" in poetry carried to its highest excellence. There are, of course, other forms of the New Poetry. There is the "blustering, hob-nailed" variety which clatters up and down with immense noise, elbows you here, and kicks you there, and if it finds a pardonable weakness strolling about in the middle of the street, immediately knocks it down and tramples upon it. Then too there is the "coarse, but manly" kind which swears ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 4, 1892 • Various
... know why I pester you with all this trash, above all as you deserve nothing. I give you my warm TALOFA ('my love to you,' Samoan salutation). Write me again when the spirit moves you. And some day, if I still live, make out the trip again and let us hob- a-nob with our grey pows on my verandah. - ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the child nervous by filling his mind with stories of hob-goblins and were-wolves, for there is always the risk that timidity contracted in childhood will ...
— Self Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion • Emile Coue
... yer. It 's sweatin' with curiosity that kills cats. (He yawns and stretches his legs across the hob.) Down in the village I learnt—I was jest takin' a drop o' rum at the Harbor Light. It 's not as sweet as Darlin's. They skimps their sugar. Yer wants ter keep droppin' it in as yer stirs it. I thinks they puts in too much water. ...
— Wappin' Wharf - A Frightful Comedy of Pirates • Charles S. Brooks
... deserted. Nobody was there. The fire, in a sullen state of half life, seemed to bear witness to the fact; the gridiron stood by the side of the hearth with bits of fish sticking to it; the saucepan which had held the eggs was still half full of water on the hob; the floor was unswept, the tray of eggs stood on one table, a quantity of unwashed dishes on another, but silence everywhere announced that the hands which should have been busy with all these matters were no longer within reach of them. Mrs. ...
— Opportunities • Susan Warner
... housekeeper, her parlour looking into the stable-yard, which seemed to Sir Reginald's wife the only really snug room within the four walls of that respectable mansion. Mrs. Moggs' old-fashioned grate and brass fender, little round table, tea-tray, and kettle singing on the hob, reminded Fanny Palliser of her own girlhood, when her mother's sitting room had worn just such an air of humble comfort. Those white and gold drawing-rooms, with their amber satin curtains and Georgian furniture, had a scenic and altogether artificial appearance to the unaccustomed eyes of one ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... that even hereabout there's hundreds of little houses for one manshun, and in every one of those little houses there's a vote, and you can have it if you go the right way about. When you're in, Eloquent, then you can hob-a-nob with the gentry if it so pleases you; but till you're in, remember it's the working man as can ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker |
