"Nail" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... one of her offspring. The hunter then killed one of the cubs, and the other two escaped. When bears are together and one is wounded by a bullet, but does not see the real assailant, it often falls tooth and nail upon its comrade, apparently attributing its injury ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... measure the glass of the lamp. Do not go up any higher than is necessary, but if you have to stretch be careful not to mark off the measurement with your nail, although the impulse is a natural one. That ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... as he suggested, unchained the woman, and she took a spear and went to meet the giant. The latter was angered, and he swallowed her, tooth and nail. This frightened the rest all ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various
... Epistle; for it is with regard to this very matter of taking unjust suffering patiently and without resistance that the apostle says that Jesus has 'left us an example.' There are limits to such silent endurance of wrong, for Paul defended himself tooth and nail before priests and kings; but Christ's followers are strongest by meek patience, and descend when they take a leaf out of their ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... legislate for labour. I am prepared to legislate in such a way that the prosperity of the manufacturer, all the manufacturers in this country, must be shared by the workpeople. I am prepared to fight, tooth and nail, against twenty per cent dividends on capital and twenty-five shillings a week wages for the operative. There are others in the Cabinet of my point of view. In a couple of years we must go to the country. I am going to the country ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... give. So if you know how to read, find someone who can't. If you've got a hammer, find a nail. If you're not hungry, not lonely, not in trouble—seek ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... some form. [See Walpole, Reminiscences. ] Not this one, we say:—but the thread-paper Duchess of Kendal, actual Ex-mistress; who tore her hair on the road when apoplexy overtook poor George, and who now attends chapel diligently, poor old anatomy or lean human nail-rod. For the sake of the English reader searching into what is called "History," I, with indignation, endeavor to discriminate these two beings once again; that each may be each, till both are happily forgotten to all eternity. It was the latter, lean may-pole ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... the card, you are in the watch trade. Pebblemarsh is the nearest town, only five miles down the road; there's a station there, but you'd better avoid that. There's a garage. You could get a car to London. If they nail you, scream like an excited Jew, produce your credentials, and if the worst comes to the worst refer to me and come back here. I would love that interview. Country policeman, lunatic asylum man, Mr. Isaacson highly ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... were all hard at it, and no hand idle but Dicky in arms, and Sally, whom he kept in full employ; but Pedro, being a sturdy lad, could drive a nail, and lift or carry the things I wanted, and Jemmy and David, though so young, could pick up the chips, hold a nail or the lamp, or be some way or other useful; for I always preached to them the necessity of earning their bread before they ate ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... good economy to make the best of everything. How much more to make the best of every creature! Therefore, when your pauper comes to you and asks for bread, ask of him instantly—What faculty have you? What can you do best? Can you drive a nail into wood? Go and mend the parish fences. Can you lay a brick? Mend the walls of the cottages where the wind comes in. Can you lift a spadeful of earth? Turn this field up three feet deep all over. Can you only drag a weight ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... were procurable. Blue and white-striped galatea exactly suited the purpose, as it would be light for packing, and the colour could not run. We bought it, we paid for it, and home we marched. In less than an hour that gown was cut out by the aid of a pair of nail scissors, without any kind or sort of pattern whatever, and was sewn up ready for use. Out my sister went to bathe, triumphant; but so rare was a bathing-dress that the onlookers thought the English lady had fallen into the water by mischance ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... twice as great in the scantling. Olaf himself helped at the work, and laboured as hard as any other two men. Whenever any difficulty arose he was there to set it right, and all knew that every part of the work must be well done, that every piece of timber must be free from rot, and every nail and rivet made of the best metal or the king would discover the fault ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton
... his long nap, he attempted to bully the attendant and drink-mixer in the hut, and openly flaunted his incredulity until the bar-tender showed him a long bunch of Rip's hair, which hung like a scalp on a nail, and the rusty barrel and stock of the musket. The cabin is, indeed, full of old guns, pistols, locks of hair, buttons, cartridge-boxes, bullets, knives, and other undoubted relics of Rip and the Revolution. This cabin, with its facilities for slaking thirst on a hot day, which Rip would ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... she planed off a pellet of good sound wood—it looked like a nail-scrape, the mark she made—and masticating it and moistening it with saliva, whirred back like a homing aeroplane to ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... creator "no end" to tell about him—before which rigorous mission the serenest of creators might well have quailed. I was far from the serenest; I was more than agitated enough to reflect that, grimly deprived of one alternative or one substitute for "telling," I must address myself tooth and nail to another. I couldn't, save by implication, make other persons tell EACH OTHER about him—blest resource, blest necessity, of the drama, which reaches its effects of unity, all remarkably, by paths absolutely opposite to the paths of the novel: with other persons, ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... of London, latten founder, of the age of 56 years, sworn or examined upon his oath, saith that Walton did make of new for stages and stage players as much as by estimation, esteemed by this deponent and William Sayer at 50s. in board, timber, lath, nail, sprig and daubing, which the said Rastell should have paid to the said Walton by their arbitrament, which were chosen indifferently by them both, and then Rastell said it was too much, and afterwards the said Rastell arrested the same Walton, and ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... himself, the strength of mind to forego this temptation. However, he reckoned without his window, for in it there was an old object newly displayed which caught his attention as effectually as a half-driven nail arrests the hem of a cloak. On the central shelf of the window stood an hour-glass, its framework of some wood as black as ebony. He stood gazing at it for a moment, then turned to the door and went inside, greeting the ancient shopman, ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... skilful in all the arts of beggars and vagabonds. I know how to open locks with a nail, and how to carve ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... now, Kendric," said she. Such a feeling of weakness came over me that I could not speak. I thought a nail had been driven into my brain, but the tears that began rolling down my cheeks and the moans that broke from my lips ...
— The Master of Silence • Irving Bacheller
... key,' said Lance. 'He used to keep it on a nail inside the study door, which opens into the passage leading into this ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... hit him on a place or twain, That on his arms the red blood trickled down, And yet himself untouched did remain, No nail was broke, no plume cut from his crown; Argantes raging spent his strength in vain, Waste were his strokes, his thrusts were idle thrown, Yet pressed he on, and doubled still his blows, And where he hits he neither cares ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... in revolt against? Against you, fool, dolt, idiot, against you, against everything! Against Heavy, Hell and punctuation . . . against Life, Death, rhyme and rhythm . . . Persecute me, now, persecute me, curse you, persecute me! Slave that you are . . . what do Marriage, Tooth-brushes, Nail-files, the Decalogue, Handkerchiefs, Newton's Law of Gravity, Capital, Barbers, Property, Publishers, Courts, Rhyming Dictionaries, ...
— Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers • Don Marquis
... Rue Taranne he knocked at the door of a small furnished lodging-house at the corner of that street and the Rue du Dragon, took a candlestick from a table, a key numbered 12 from a nail, and climbed the stairs without exciting other attention than a well-known lodger would returning home. The clock was striking ten as he closed the door of his room. He listened attentively to the strokes, ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... allow to monopolise the name. Cunning is the only resource of the feeble; and why may we not feel for victorious cunning as strong a sympathy as for the bold, downright, open bearing of the strong? That there may be no mistake in the essayist's meaning, that he may drive the nail home into the English understanding, he takes an illustration which shall be familiar to all of us in the characters of Iago and Othello. To our northern thought, the free and noble nature of the Moor ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... locksmith's apprentice was enabled, by the devil's help, to make the iron bars and padlock which confine the limb in its place; every locksmith's apprentice who came to Vienna after that, drove a nail into it, till finally there was room for no more. It is a singular legend, and whoever may have placed the limb there originally, there it has remained for two or three hundred years ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... he'll be calmed down, maybe before. I tell you what; you stroll out and take in the store windows for a spell and then drift back later. Come up here if you like, or you can wait in the arcade and nail him as he comes ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford
... Scenery and costumes and everything and—and—" Here Mr. Smilk showed signs of blubbering, a weakness that suddenly gave way to the most energetic indignation. "Why, doggone it, every time I think of what that woman done to me, I could bite a nail in two. If it ...
— Yollop • George Barr McCutcheon
... we could. 'Twas little; would that Drake had heeded our advice! But I am rejoiced to see you on the road to recovery, dear boy; 'twould have been another nail in my coffin to know that you had lost your life in doing a service for me. I thank God for that, from the ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... And damme, sir,' cried Gabriel, 'with your pardon for the word, I'd do the same if she had married fifty highwaymen in a twelvemonth; and think it in the Protestant Manual too, though Martha said it wasn't, tooth and nail, till doomsday!' ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... in that village a sword of heavenly forgery, beaten upon Vulcan's anvil. It was never used but in the temple, and then the flat of it only; and it hung on a nail by the catechist's chimney. Early one night Jack rose, and took the sword, and was gone out of the house and the village in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... there's no making much of that lassie. But ae thing I have cleared—that is, that Robertson has been the father of the bairn, and so I will wager a boddle it will be he that's to meet wi' Jeanie Deans this night at Muschat's Cairn, and there we'll nail him, Rat, or my name is ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... picking off an invisible thread from her sleeve, rolling it up to an invisible ball between her white finger and thumb, and casting it delicately away; or settling a ring, or brushing off invisible dust with a flick of a polished finger-nail; all these manoeuvers executed with such leisure and easy deliberation that they didn't make her seem restless, and you knew she calculated that effect. A man who had had years with a real, living woman like Marise, didn't know whether to laugh or swear at such mannerisms and the ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... the astonished soldier, who had by the gun-flash recognized the familiar features of a quondam friend; "why on earth didn't you tell your name, man? I might have killed you as dead as a door-nail." ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... act—scared to death. He wanted to change his overalls for pants before we took him anywhere. Said they were hanging up in here. We fell for it. We came in, and there was a pair of pants hanging on a nail. He walked over to them, and the next thing we knew he had a gun on us. I hope I know when a man means business—and he did. He had half a ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... the name of the old boy is the matter with you, man? Have you trod on a nail or piece of glass, or anything that has gone through your foot, or what is it?" demanded Jerome, ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... them rather a barbaric appearance. The side walks are literally encumbered with bales of scarlet flannel, and every other article of an emigrant's outfit. At the outfitters' stores you can buy anything, from a cart-nail to a revolver; from a suit of oilskin to a paper of needles. The streets present an extraordinary spectacle. Everything reminds that one is standing on the very ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... there was the same lack of choice. She could not find a glass-headed picture-nail in town; she did not hunt for the sort of veiling she wanted—she took what she could get; and only at Howland & Gould's was there such a luxury as canned asparagus. Routine care was all she could devote to the house. Only ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... sweeping way, "of men who have had to spend their lives at a two-company post, where there was nothing to do when off duty but play draw-poker and drink whiskey at the sutler's shop?" This was, of course, meant to be picturesquely extravagant, but it hit the nail on the head, after all. Some of the officers of the old regime did not conceal their contempt for books. It was a stock story in the army that when the Utah expedition was fitting out in 1856, General Henry Hunt, chief of artillery of the army ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... erected near where it had before stood, and the drift wood collected to dry in the sun in order that it might serve to form a beacon-fire at night. The first thing to be done was to caulk the boat. Mr Scoones and the carpenter's mate undertook to do this and to nail such planks as had been started, which was no easy matter, as not a stone could be found, and they had only the handles of their knives. But patience and perseverance had overcome greater difficulties than theirs. The carpenter's mate ...
— Owen Hartley; or, Ups and Downs - A Tale of Land and Sea • William H. G. Kingston
... of your weakness; break it off by truth; break it off by one stout effort, in one steadfast prayer; break it off by innocent and free enjoyment; break it off by honest work. Put your 'hand to the nail and your right hand to the workman's hammer;' strike through the enemy which has ensnared you, pierce and strike him through and through. However powerful he seems, at your feet he will bow, he will fall, he will lie down; at your feet he will bow and ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... cowardice one might dislike the thought of having one's throat cut while one's hands were bound and one watched the blood gushing into an old army-ration tin. Perhaps there would be none to gush—and a good job too. Serve them right. Could he cut his wrists on a nail or a splinter or with the cords, and cheat them, if there were any blood in him now. He would try. Yes, an unpleasant death. No one, no true Somali, that is, objected to a prod in the heart with a shovel-headed spear, a thwack in the head with ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... and unmanageable, he administered a fatherly rebuke in the shape of a boxed ear, which had no other effect than the eliciting from the child the outcry, "Let me be, old doctor, you!" if, indeed, we except the long scratch made upon his hand by the little sharp nail ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes
... ten thousand francs,'" continued David. "Ten thousand francs, father! Why, that is two francs a pound, and the Messrs. Didot only ask thirty-six sous for their Cicero! These nail-heads of yours will only fetch the price ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... best I could," he protested with a bright spot of color in his cheeks. "Some of the men have tinkered up their tenements and I have counted it toward the rent, but they don't all know how to drive a nail." ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... woodbines, in your 'twines, Curl me about, ye gadding vines; And oh so close your circles lace, That I may never leave this place; But, lest your fetters prove too weak, Ere I your silken bondage break, Do you, O brambles, chain me too, And, courteous briars, nail me through! ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... mien Of his own parent God were seen. Some chiefs of Vanar mothers came, Some of she-bear and minstrel dame, Skilled in all arms in battle's shock; The brandished tree, the loosened rock; And prompt, should other weapons fail, To fight and slay with tooth and nail. Their strength could shake the hills amain, And rend the rooted trees in twain, Disturb with their impetuous sweep The Rivers' Lord, the Ocean deep, Rend with their feet the seated ground, And pass wide floods with airy bound, Or forcing through the sky their way The ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... the back half an inch from the opening, the longer fitting in between the two shorter ones. Glue them on, then nail them. Against these cleats glue the back (1) before nailing it. Next glue and nail on the two supports against the back and on a level with the lower edge (Figure 4). On the fourth side, where there is no cleat, ...
— Construction Work for Rural and Elementary Schools • Virginia McGaw
... didn't have de fine house but it a big one. Us quarters sot off 'cross de field in de edge of a skit of woods. Dey have dirt floors and a fireplace and old pole and plank bunks nail ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Texas Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... Babylon occupied on the eastern banks of the Euphrates a space of ground six leagues in length. Throughout this space bricks are found by means of which daily additions are made to the town of Helle. Upon many of these are characters written with a nail similar to those of Persepolis. I am indebted for these facts to M. de Beauchamp, grand vicar of Babylon, a traveller equally distinguished for his knowledge of astronomy and for ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... flies the martyrs whose bodies are covered with honey; they make them walk with bare feet over broken glass or red-hot coals, put them in ditches with reptiles; chastise them with whips, whose thongs are weighted with leaden balls; nail them when alive in coffins, which they throw into the sea; hang them by their hair, and then set fire to them; moisten their wounds with quicklime, boiling pitch, or molten lead; make them sit on red-hot iron stools; burn their sides with torches; ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... a manicure set presented to you! When filling it with the necessary manicure preparations, include the —— Nail Polish, which all chemists keep; it keeps ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 28, 1914 • Various
... sir!" was his criticism, "dead as a door nail! All the medicine in the shop wouldn't kindle one spark ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... driven the nail straight to the mark that time. I could have wailed; but was I going to have Lize Jane go home and tell that I was a baby? No! and I spoke up ...
— Aunt Madge's Story • Sophie May
... into his hand a wisp of her long, golden hair. "Sleep on it and dream of me. Do not look so sad. I shall come for you without fail, and by this sign you shall know when I am coming. When this mark begins to heal," she said, as, with the nail on the forefinger of the right hand, she scratched his forehead, ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... the script with her finger nail and read quickly and carelessly like a little girl in a hurry. He offered to hear her her words. She passed him the book and got up to repeat what she had learned. She floundered and would repeat ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... rough, and placed in the form of a square, upon each other, as high as they wish to have the house; the ends of these timbers are let into each other, about a foot from the ends, half of one into half of the other. The whole structure is thus made, without a nail or a spike. The ceiling and roof do not exhibit much finer work, except among the most careful people, who have the ceiling planked and a glass window. The doors are wide enough, but very low, so that you have to stoop in entering. These houses are quite ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... brine, one of the plank-ends started from its place; and the sharp, sudden sound, breaking the scorching silence, caused us both to spring to our feet. Instantly the sea burst in; but we made shift to secure the rebellious plank with a cord, not having a nail; we then bailed out the boat, nearly half full ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... finished the work the day before, he had slipped in during his lunch-hour to give it a final touch or two. He had brought his lunch in the form of a pork-pie, and while with one hand he plunged the pie occasionally among his red whiskers, with the other he would lean forward and touch up a knot or a nail-hole that needed a little more paint. And he was proud as a boy of the simple bit of slap-dashing, and entirely absorbed in it ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne
... breath, the poor helpless human spirit, sobbing and sighing, gurgling and rattling in the throat. No help! No help! He—he himself—his body to which he had yielded was dying. Into the grave with it. Nail it down into a wooden box, the corpse. Carry it out of the house on the shoulders of hirelings. Thrust it out of men's sight into a long hole in the ground, into the grave, to rot, to feed the mass of its creeping worms and to be ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... staring truncheon, red top, and rooted into a thicket of curls, which covered his belly to the novel, and gave it the air of a flesh brush; and soon I feel it joining close to mine, when he had drove the nail up to the head, and left no partition but the intermediate hair ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... his heels. "I'm coming," he answered out of the darkness, "I'm coming." And after a slight delay he appeared with the lantern and hung it from a nail in the front pole of the tent. The shadows of a hundred trees shifted their places quickly as he did so, and when he stumbled over the rope, diving swiftly inside, the whole tent trembled as though a gust ...
— The Wendigo • Algernon Blackwood
... as he drove in a nail. Then he fell to thinking of a girl in his own village whose father was as ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... ignorance, and said to me, 'I see you have not been well taught; for you have not charity.' He had been in some measure forced into this warmth, by the exulting air which I assumed; for, when he began, he said, 'Since you will drive the nail!' He again thought of good Mr. M'Queen, and, taking him by the hand, said, 'Sir, I did not ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... that her shattered hulk Should sink beneath the wave; Her thunders shook the mighty deep, And there should be her grave; Nail to the mast her holy flag, Set every threadbare sail, And give her to the god of storms, The lightning and ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... sent but one recipe to a cook book, and that was a direction for driving a nail, as it has always been declared that women do not know how to drive nails. But that was when nails were a peculiar shape and had to be driven in particular way, but now that nails are made round there is no special way in which they need to be driven. So my favorite ...
— The Suffrage Cook Book • L. O. Kleber
... only be tested by actual trial; but since it is desirable to test before purchasing it, it may be mentioned that one method is to mix a little on the finger nail, and if it has a "bronzy" gloss it is a good indication. It should also spread out and dry without ...
— Mechanical Drawing Self-Taught • Joshua Rose
... dogmas. The human brain is a machine for coming to conclusions; if it cannot come to conclusions it is rusty. When we hear of a man too clever to believe, we are hearing of something having almost the character of a contradiction in terms. It is like hearing of a nail that was too good to hold down a carpet; or a bolt that was too strong to keep a door shut. Man can hardly be defined, after the fashion of Carlyle, as an animal who makes tools; ants and beavers and many other animals make tools, in the sense that they make an apparatus. ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... crooked to redress In trust of her (Fortune) that turneth as a ball. Greate rest stands in little business. Beware also to spurn against a nail. Strive not as doth a pitcher with a wall. Deeme thyself that deemest others' deed; And truth thee shall deliver, ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... at me, and my heart beat like a drum so loudly that I thought people must hear. But her glance wandered on casually over the throng, and then I felt truly insignificant, like a man who could hide behind the nail of his own thumb. ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... as on other occasions, in an imaginary vision, most interiorly, He held out His right hand and said: "Behold this nail! it is the pledge of thy being My bride from this day forth. Until now thou hadst not merited it; from henceforth thou shalt regard My honour, not only as of one who is Thy Creator, King, and God, but as thine, My veritable bride; My honour is thine, and thine is ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... the Caesar; "thou wantest not my lantern, to discern an honest man, whom, if thou didst seek, I must needs say thou hast come to the wrong place to find one. Nail thou up these creeping shrubs before the entrance of the place, and abide thou there as already directed, till our return, to parry the curiosity of any who may be attracted by the sight ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... among the sweating industries in the country is chain and nail-making. The condition of the chain-makers of Cradley Heath has called forth much public attention. The system of employment is a somewhat complicated one. A middleman, called a "fogger," acts as a go-between, receiving the material from the master, distributing ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson
... climax of misfortune, old Cesar had run a nail into his hoof and Madame Guix spent most of her time between injections of oxygen on the first floor, and iodine and flaxseed poultices in the stables. This of course meant that all errands outside the village must be made on bicycle, and George was "mustered into ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard
... such terrible extremities. During the last six or seven months, he has been seized with intolerable sulkiness at the slightest mention of the currency; for nothing vexes Time so much as to be refused cash upon the nail. The above are the chief topics of general interest which Time is just now in the habit of discussing. For his more private gossip, he has rumors of new matches, of old ones broken off, with now and then a whisper of good-natured scandal; ...
— Time's Portraiture - (From: "The Doliver Romance and Other Pieces: Tales and Sketches") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... very straight-forward and well-meant manner. You, as a learned man, certainly know how strange nature is. Some persons cannot bear to touch grey paper, or they become ill; others shiver in every limb if one rub a pane of glass with a nail: I have just such a feeling on hearing you say thou to me; I feel myself as if pressed to the earth in my first situation with you. You see that it is a feeling; that it is not pride: I cannot allow you to say THOU to me, but I will willingly say THOU to you, ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... lee of the rocky ridge, we took stock of our weapons and recovered our self-possession. The cook again ran his thumb-nail along the edge of the cleaver; Roger examined the lock of his pistol—I saw a queer expression on his face at the time, but he said nothing; Blodgett sharpened his knife on his calloused palm and the rest of us found clubs and stones. We could ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... tell it. I don't like to hear reading," replied Enna in her imperious way, at the same time taking quiet possession of Elsie's little rosewood rocking-chair—a late present from her papa, and highly prized by the little girl on that account—and beginning to scratch with her thumb nail upon ...
— Elsie Dinsmore • Martha Finley
... number of closets were contemplated, for, as you are presumably aware, woman-kind are passionately fond of closets, and happy, thrice happy, is the husband who is accorded the inestimable boon of suspending his Sunday suit from a nail therein. As for myself, I have always regarded the average closet as an ingenious device of the evil one for the propagation and ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... shall die!" Raising his bludgeon he rushed upon the High Priestess; but Tarzan was there before her. Leaping in to close quarters the ape-man seized the upraised weapon and wrenched it from the hands of the frenzied fanatic and then the priest closed upon him with tooth and nail. Seizing the stocky, stunted body in his mighty hands Tarzan raised the creature high above his head, hurling him at his fellows who were now gathered ready to bear down upon their erstwhile captive. La stood proudly ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... instruction is and his father replies, "As by one lump of clay all that is made of clay is known, and the change[187] is a mere matter of words, nothing but a name, the truth being that all is clay, and as by one piece of copper or by one pair of nail-scissors all that is made of copper or iron can be known, so is that instruction." That is to say, it would seem, the reality is One: all diversity and multiplicity is secondary and superficial, merely a matter of words. ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... object of the dog's search. The dog followed their horses for twenty miles, remained undisturbed in the room where they supped, followed the chambermaid into the bedchamber, and secreted himself under one of the beds. The possessor of the shilling hung his trousers upon a nail by the bed-side; but when the travellers were both asleep, the dog took them in his mouth, and leaping out of the window, which was left open on account of the sultry heat, reached the house of his master at four o'clock in the morning ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... as though everything must go wrong by a natural law. In the first place, while making a hobble peg, while Carmichael and Robinson were away after the horses, the little piece of wood slipped out of my hand, and the sharp blade of the knife went through the top and nail of my third finger and stuck in the end of my thumb. The cut bled profusely, and it took me till the horses came to sew my mutilated digits up. It was late when we left this waterless spot. As there was a hill with a prepossessing ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... this one was only roused to a fury as much greater for her size than Sir Jeoffry was bigger than herself. She flew at him and poured forth oaths, she shrieked at him and beat his legs with his own crop, which she caught up from the floor where it lay within reach, she tore at him with tooth and nail, and with such strength and infant fearlessness as arrested him in his frenzy and caused him to burst forth laughing as ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... and noisy games of other girls for fear of getting scratched. Once, however, I was playing with some of my school friends in a courtyard. We were swinging on the shafts of a cart when I fell and ran a nail into my cheek. The pain was nothing compared to the thought of a permanent mark. I was depressed for months, until one day I heard a teacher say that the mark was all but gone—a mere ...
— The Dangerous Age • Karin Michaelis
... means; I had not had the same forbearance for the superfluous wealth of others. I had learned with what simple tools old locks may fly open; and none had ever suspected me, so I had no fear of danger, small need of premeditation: a nail on your mantelpiece, the cloven end of the hammer lying beside, to crook it when hot from the fire that blazed before me! I say this to show you that I did not come provided; nothing was planned beforehand; all ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the same. No matter where he was, or in what circumstances he was placed, James Garfield always showed his colours, and he was never afraid to nail them to the mast. ...
— The Story of Garfield - Farm-boy, Soldier, and President • William G. Rutherford
... (saith Ezra), I am ashamed and blush to lift up my face to thee," Ezra. ix. 6. And what was it that did so confound him? You may find it in that which followeth: God had showed them mercy, and had left them a remnant to escape, and had given them a nail in his holy place, and had lightened their eyes: "And now (saith he), O our God, what shall we say after this? for we have forsaken thy commandments," Ezra. ix. 10. Let us this day compare, as he did, God's goodness and our own guiltiness. England deserved nothing but to get a bill of divorce, and ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... a little matter I've got to look after this afternoon," he said, his manner nicely calculated to repel any tender advances. "I'll have to hurry along, and there won't be any occasion for you to linger. Please hang the key on the nail so Persis can let herself in ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... drinking supernaculum, consisted in turning down the cup upon the thumb-nail of the drinker after his pledge, when, if duly quaffed off, no drop of liquor ought to appear ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... them,' he once said to me. Knowing his kindly nature, I was surprised at his words. It is hard to judge between parents and children. 'A great ravine starts from a little rift,' Alexey Sergeitch said to me once in this connection: 'a wound a yard wide may heal; but once cut off even a finger nail, it will ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... of things earthly? It is, says the world, ever forward and rash—'a door-nail!' But the world is wrong. There is a thing deader than a door-nail, viz., Gillman's Coleridge, Vol. I. Dead, more dead, most dead, is Gillman's Coleridge, Vol. I.; and this upon more arguments than one. The book has clearly not completed its elementary act ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... not yet regular—he forthwith became her slave. She set him to draw up the fire while she got the tea, and then, without taking any notice of David, she marched John upstairs to help her hang her curtains, lay her carpet, and nail up the coloured fashion plates and newspaper prints of royalties or beauties with which she was adorning the bare ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... aught design against that steed, For, while I an avenging sabre rear, This I prohibit thee, and, should it need, And every better means of battle fail, With thee for this would battle, tooth and nail." ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... arms is the most usual, and screws with more than three arms are not now much employed in this country. The screw on being put into revolution by the engine, preserves a spiral path in the water, in which it draws itself forward in the same way as a screw nail does when turned round in a piece of wood, whereas the paddle wheel more resembles the action of a cog wheel working ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... is my right to forbid you,—you shall not go!' he cried. Then ensued a quarrel, bitter, terrible, between two beings who so short a while before had loved so madly. The quarrel ended by the man giving in, as usual, but the wrangle pierced one more nail in his love's coffin for ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... much persuasion, to allow the baby to be inspected, which the newcomers did thoroughly. Not an eye, a limb, a finger-nail, or even a hair, escaped their attention, but were examined and criticized with ...
— Rataplan • Ellen Velvin
... acknowledge them; look at your present and future difficulties, count them up and face them every one, and admit that they are more than you can hope to conquer; but then look at the dying Son of God, your Saviour—the Man with the seamless robe, the crown of thorns, and the nail-prints; look at the fountain of His Blood; look at His word; look at the Almighty Holy Ghost, who will dwell within you, if you but trust and obey, and cry out: "It shall be done! The mountain shall become a plain; the impossible shall become possible. Hallelujah!" Quietly, intelligently, abandon ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle
... titles, such as—"Heaven ravished"—"The Blacksmith, a sermon preached at Whitehall before the King," 1606. Beloe, in his Anecdotes of Literature, vol. 6, has recorded many of these quaint titles, among them the following:—"The Nail hit on the head, and driven into the city and cathedral wall of Norwich. By John Carter, 1644." "The Wheel turned by a voice from the throne of glory. By John Carter, 1647." "Two Sticks made one, or the excellence of Unity. By Matthew Mead, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... story continues the friendly face of a kindly old man standing on top of a ladder suddenly appeared at my window. He began to nail heavy boards across the window from the outside. He smiled and spoke a few kind words and told me to be of good cheer. He confided to me in a sweet and gentle way that he was in prison for drinking, ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... disposal; and a soldier should not have hesitated in his choice a moment. No: Uncle George had fallen from grace, and was unanimously damned. And the non-arrival of the Himalayan rabbits was only another nail in his coffin. Uncles, therefore, were just then a heavy and lifeless market, and there was little inclination to deal. Still it was agreed that Uncle William, who had just returned from India, should have as fair a trial as the others; more especially as romantic possibilities ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... mental confusion, and in that alone, that the new Imperialism lives and moves and has its being. The whole glory and greatness of Mr. Chamberlain consists in this: that if a man hits the right nail on the head nobody cares where he hits it to or what it does. They care about the noise of the hammer, not about the silent drip of the nail. Before and throughout the African war, Mr. Chamberlain was always knocking in nails, with ringing decisiveness. But when we ask, "But what have these nails ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... beneath the finger-nail. The pain occasioned by the inflammatory action and tumor of parts bound down between the nail on one side and the bone on the other, neither of which will yield, is said to occasion so much pain as to produce immediate delirium, and even death, except the parts ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... to assist the occupant of the vehicle to alight, but Betty, ignoring assistance, attempted to spring past him to the ground. As the willful maiden did so the topknot of her hood caught in a provoking nail of the open door and was violently pulled from her head: and as her lovely, rosy face almost brushed his sleeve, Geoffrey started ...
— An Unwilling Maid • Jeanie Gould Lincoln
... round, worm-eaten knobs, and the wood was split by the dryness. On each bed was a mattress and a matting, covered with a ragged green spread. A piece of mirror in a varnished frame, an old game-bag on a nail, and a worn silk cravat which showed the crease of its folds, indicated that the room belonged to some one who probably slept there ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert
... Islands, and stretches across the stream like a dyke, running nearly north and south with a westerly dip of about 60 degrees. Elsewhere, along the shores of Coral Haven, this mica-slate is of a leaden hue and glistening lustre, yielding to the nail, with a slight greasy feel, especially in some pieces of a shining ash-grey, acted upon by salt-water. From hand specimens alone it is difficult to assign a name to this rock, as it partakes more or less of the characters of mica, chlorite, ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... had long ago stopped her work and was sitting huddled in the doorway on a nail-keg with weary, folded hands and a strange wistfulness on her apathetic face. A fine silence had settled over the group as the girl, recognizing her power, and the pleasure she was giving, sang on. Now ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... his size could pass, and showed so great an inclination to go through a hole in the open-work fire-board that I hastily covered it up. After a while he tested the matting and carefully investigated, by light taps of his bill, each separate nail. His step was heavy, and he did not hop, but ran around with a droll little patter of the ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... they put him on a heavy pair of irons, and then stapled him fast down to the floor. Being left there alone in the sessions time (most of the people in the gaol then attending at the Old Bailey) with a crooked nail he opened the lock, and by that means got rid of his chain, and went directly to the chimney in the room, where with incessant working he got out a couple of stones and by that means climbed up into a room called the Red Room, where nobody had been lodged for a considerable ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... Urania Rylance—how the serpentine coils of that damsel's malice and pride could be trodden under foot! Not a ball, not a dinner, not a garden-party given at the Abbey that would not be a thorn in Urania's side, a nail in Urania's coffin. ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... slabs set upright in the ground, and nailed on to a wall-plate. You will first plant large posts at each of the corners, and one at either side every door, and four for the chimney. At the top of these you will set your wall- plates; to the wall-plates you will nail your slabs; on the inside of the slabs you will nail light rods of wood, and plaster them over with mud, having first, however, put up the roof and thatched it. Three or four men will have split the stuff and put up the hut in a fortnight. We will suppose it to be about ...
— A First Year in Canterbury Settlement • Samuel Butler
... it's the other chap I'm after now—perhaps you'll be so obliging as to tell me where I can put my paws on him. I hung the duck from this nail—the cord was good and strong, and it couldn't have broken loose. You see it ain't there now. So the question is did the blamed bird come to life again and skedaddle off, or was one of your friends the foxes aboard while we snoozed, to make way with my fat duck? ...
— The House Boat Boys • St. George Rathborne
... never attach itself again to the trunk; and whenever wounds, abrasures, or sections of loose bark exist on the trunk of a tree, the damaged part should be cut away cleanly, as far as the injury extends. Careful persons have been known to nail to a tree a piece of loosened bark, in hope of inducing it to grow again, or at least of retaining on the young wood its natural covering. Unfortunately the result produced by this operation is exactly opposite to that intended. The decaying wood and bark attract ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... next day when I reached Valcartier and after a month of solid work, the like of which I had never before experienced, I was as hard as a nail, and as tough, as indeed was every man in that honor division ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... has bartered clean away. We have threshed a stook of print and book, and winnowed a chattering wind And many a soul wherefrom he stole, but his we cannot find: We have handled him, we have dandled him, we have seared him to the bone, And sure if tooth and nail show truth he has no soul ...
— The Minister and the Boy • Allan Hoben
... became clear in his mind, but he had to let Greg know. He fingered the control of his helmet radio. The boarding party would have a snooper, but if he was quick, they wouldn't have time to nail him. He buzzed an attention code. "Greg? Can ...
— Gold in the Sky • Alan Edward Nourse
... long-boat. The carpenter pronounced some of the planks so rotten and worm-eaten, as to make it surprising that she had not at once gone to the bottom, and he was afraid of doing anything to them lest he should make matters worse. Our only means, therefore, of stopping the leaks, was to nail some canvas we fortunately had with us over the bottom of the boat; having first carefully inserted some oakum between the planks, and rubbed ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... in the central hall of the world's fair. From his distracting account of the business it would appear that he is now building a monument, anon he is painting a picture (with brushes dipped in a gallipot made of an earthquake); again he strikes a keynote, weaves a pattern, draws a wire, drives a nail, treads a measure, sounds a trumpet, or hits a target; or skirmishes around his subject; or lays it bare with a dissecting knife; or embalms a thought; or crucifies an enemy. What is he really doing ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... patrol fallers never ban so lucky as when you sail with Ole Ericsen," he was saying, when a rifle cracked sharply astern, and a bullet gouged along the newly painted cabin, glanced on a nail, and sang shrilly onward ...
— Tales of the Fish Patrol • Jack London
... spirit Hitty snatched her child, and wrapped him in the blanket where he lay; her shawl was on the chair she had slept in, her hood upon a nail by the door, and flinging both on, with the child in her arms, she followed her husband down-stairs, across the back-yard, hitting her feet against stones and logs in the darkness, stumbling often, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... a horizon are difficult things to nail signboards to. Emerson's outward-inward qualities make him hard to classify, but easy for some. There are many who like to say that he—even all the Concord men—are intellectuals. Perhaps—but intellectuals who wear their brains nearer the heart than some ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... Mell's sore and angry fancies flew as usual to the chest. "It's so big," she thought, "that all the children could get into it. I'll play that a wicked enchanter came and flew away with mother, and never let her come back. Then I should have to take care of the children; and I'd get somebody to nail some boards, so as to make five dear little cubby-houses inside the chest. I'd put Tommy in one, Isaphine in another, Arabella Jane in another, Belinda in another, and Gabella Sarah in another. Then I'd shut the lid down and fasten it, and wouldn't ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... among carpenters, and blacksmiths, and stone masons, and weavers, when they began to take pride in their work, when they began to try and ornament their own tools, when the joiner who knew nothing of the Greeks began to trace a pattern with a red-hot nail on the clumsy wooden chest, when the smith dinted out a simple design upon the head of his hammer, when the mason chipped out a face or a leaf on the corner of the rough stone house, and when the weaver taught himself to make patterns in the stuff he wove. The true ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... kinship. Well, we two know these transfigured persons, these college passmen, these well groomed monocular Algys and Bobbies, these cricketers to whom age brings golf instead of wisdom, these plutocratic products of "the nail and sarspan business as he got his money by." Do you know whether to laugh or cry at the notion that they, poor devils! will drive a team of continents as they drive a four-in-hand; turn a jostling anarchy of ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... occasional opportunity like that of Tuesday, has been present to me these two days as better than nothing. But if our friends are so accountable to this house of course there's no more to be said. And it's one more nail, thank God, in the coffin of our odious delay." He was but too glad without more ado to point the moral. "Now I hope you see we ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... true course. Tomorrow by the end of the day we shall come to a mountain of black stone, highs the Magnet Mountain;[FN257] for thither the currents carry us willy-nilly. As soon as we are under its lea, the ship's sides will open and every nail in plank will fly out and cleave fast to the mountain; for that Almighty Allah hath gifted the loadstone with a mysterious virtue and a love for iron, by reason whereof all which is iron travelleth towards it; and on this mountain is much iron, how much none knoweth save the Most High, from ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... was much in love with the lusty young farmer who had stolen the bales of cotton and sold them for a drunk. And it was he who suggested that, through her, we get possession of the keys. For, every day, she informed us, she passed them by where they hung on a nail, downstairs, as she swept and cleaned house ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... go by himself for a five-mile walk, leaving Daphne, Valentia and Harry in the garden, but a nail in his boot hurt so much that, after the first half-mile, Romer decided he couldn't stand it any longer, and would walk back, go quietly in, and then surprise them by coming ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... the first in order to prevent people touching it; but I have managed to get a piece of it, and here it is." I took it in my hand, and the matter was made clear in an instant. The stone was not our hard Onondaga gray limestone, but soft, easily marked with the finger-nail, and, on testing it with an acid, I found it, not hard carbonate of lime, but a soft, friable sulphate of lime—a form of gypsum, which must have been brought from some other part ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... I'll give it up. But you are a good deal to blame. You have told me of what you saw when you were in the army. You have showed me that there are bigger things in this world than plodding after a plough, and more exciting chases than those after foxes. I want to do more than sit on a nail-keg in the store and discuss big events. I want to have a little part ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... Barker paused; then a slow, calculating smile creased his lips. "Miss Gresham—her he was engaged to! Dog-gone if I don't believe you've hit the nail on the ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... curse of modesty I would tell how eagerly I grasped the axe and with what ease I hit, not twice, but half a dozen times in the same place—until the stump yielded. This victory was all the sweeter to me because it came right after our sports day when I had entered every available contest, from the nail-driving competition to the fat woman's race, and had never even been ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung
... can all set," lamented sister Mandana. "There ain't but the one chair an' the bed; t'other chair's too rickety; an' we've been promised another these ten days; but first they've forgot it, an' next Mis' Janes can't spare it,—one excuse an' another. I am goin' to git a stump o' wood an' nail a board on to it, when I can git outdoor again," said Mandana, in a plaintive voice. "There, I ain't goin' to complain o' nothin', now you've come," she added; and the guests sat down, Mrs. Trimble, as was proper, ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... observe the apartment—the neatly-scrubbed floor, with one narrow cot bed against the wall, a tall bureau on which some brown old books were lying, and the little dust-pan and dust-brush on a brass nail in the corner. There was a brightly polished stove with no fire in it, and some straight-backed chairs of yellow wood stood round the room. An open door into a large, roomy closet showed various garments of men's apparel hanging upon the wall. ...
— On the Church Steps • Sarah C. Hallowell
... leading to the fore-peak he saw that the place was nearly full of water. His exploration of the forecastle ended here; and he was about to proceed on deck when he caught sight of a fishing-line suspended on a nail inside one of the bunks. This fishing-line he at once secured and took on deck with him laying it down on top of the carpenter's tool-chest so that it might not be forgotten ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... paper box, intending to observe his habits and development. Seeing Dr. Bandinel near, I asked him to look at my curiosity. Hardly, however, had I turned the wriggling little victim out upon the leather-covered table, when down came the doctor's great thumb-nail upon him, and an inch-long smear proved the tomb of all my hopes, while the great bibliographer, wiping his thumb on his coat sleeve, passed on with the remark, "Oh, yes! they have black heads sometimes." That was something ...
— Enemies of Books • William Blades
... some shelves," said my mother, "that we may put things on them, or else we never can be tidy; and we have not one except that which holds the books. I think we can manage it. We have, two oars left besides the boat's yard; we will nail them along the side of the cabin, about a foot or more from it, and then we will cut some of the boat's sail, and nail the canvass from the side of the cabin to the oars, and that will make a sort of shelf which will ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat |
