"Plumb" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Brewster. "I only paid Thirty-Five Cents for the Glass Blowers, an' I'll warrant you they beat your Troupe as bad as Cranberries beats Glue. I'll see you plumb in Halifax before I—" ...
— More Fables • George Ade
... his most mysterious air of business, told Edwin to follow him into the shop. Several hours of miscellaneous consultative pottering had passed between Darius and his compositors round and about the new printing machine, which was once more plumb and ready for action. For considerably over a week Edwin had been on his father's general staff without any definite task or occupation having been assigned to him. His father had been too excitedly preoccupied with the arrival and ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... an issue or two, we note a letter from Edwin Magnuson, a deluded denizen of Duluth, who says he's plumb disgusted because Astounding Stories receives far more bouquets than brickbats, when according to him the mag deserves to be panned plenty. Get in step, ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... clearly conscious of his love for Katiousha; especially if it were sought to persuade him that he could and must not link his fate to that of the girl, he would very likely have decided in his plumb-line mind that there was no reason why he should not marry her, no matter who she was, provided he loved her. But the aunts did not speak of their fears, and he departed without knowing that ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... if he will—says he's gone to bed, an' that there ain't a cussed female in this blasted country he'd git up for," he reported circumstantially to the clerk. "He told me to tell you to go plumb to hell, an' that if any one else come poundin' 'round thar to-night, he'd take a pot shot at 'em through the door. 'Fifteen' seemed a bit peevish, sir, an' I reckoned if he was riled up much more, he might git rambunctious; ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... by plumb an' rule, o' course; but there's no spontaneeity yet." He turned to the girl. "Take my word, Miss Frazier, and maybe ye'll comprehend later; even after a pretty girl's christened a ship it does not follow ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling
... was up here three or four years ago," answered his cousin, who, as my old readers know, was a natural-born hunter and woodsman. "Got a deer right over yonder." And he pointed with his hand. "The one I hit plumb in the left eye." ...
— On the Trail of Pontiac • Edward Stratemeyer
... until Grandma Thorndyke told me it was oil. A castor was a sort of title of nobility, and this one always lifted me in the opinions of every one that sat down at my table. Magnus said he was sure Christina would be tickled yust plumb to death with it. Ah! Christina was a wonderful legal fiction, as N.V. calls it. How many times Virginia's ears must have burned as we tenderly discussed the poor yellow-haired peasant girl far off there ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... for some time he continued: "The door jamb is built in vertically; that is sure. A string, or piece of thread will make a plumb-bob; here it is: now let us see; according to the plumb line the boat is at an angle of 33 degrees, as nearly as our imperfect device indicates. There, now this line A shows the top of the boat and B ...
— The Boy Volunteers with the Submarine Fleet • Kenneth Ward
... but a shadow and a name to Cally; she had willed it so, and so it had been. Now, in his own poor scrawl, the ghost of a lover too roughly discarded rose and walked again. And beneath the cheap writing and the unrestrained self-pity, she seemed to plumb for the first time the depths of the boy's present misery. The old story, having struck him down once, had hunted him out and struck him down again. Where now ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... takin' a candy sucker from a baby. 'Curly' let go of that 'six' like he was plumb tired of it, and the kid welted him over the ear just oncet. Then he turned on the room; and right there my heart went out to him. He took in the line up at a ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... coarse thumb And finger fail'd to plumb, So pass'd in making up the main account; All instincts immature, All purposes unsure, That weigh'd not as his work, yet ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... all in vain. He could see a long way, and sometimes it almost seemed as if he saw farther than at others; but lower down there was always that purply transparent blackness into which his eyesight plunged, but could not quite plumb. ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... every thread on the old man was new. Mart explained. "I stripped him to the buff and built him up plumb to his necktie, which is green—the wan thing he would have to his own taste. To-morrow ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... Jimmie. She was the speediest girl on the main floor, and now that she's come into those five hundred, instead of planting it for a rainy day, she's quit work and gone plumb crazy with it." ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... is this new book the whole world makes such a rout about?— Oh! 'tis out of all plumb, my lord,—quite an irregular thing; not one of the angles at the four corners was a right angle. I had my rule and compasses, my ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... the man—my promise to my father holds. They teach well, but they do not do well: it is the doing that speaks to the heart. The chief that buried his hatchet is a plumb fool, else the white chief would do so too. I ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth
... like a dog by somebody who was a-waitin' for him, hidden in the brush. The widder, pore soul, suspicioning trouble, follered Jake, and found him with a bullet plumb through his heart. She heard the shot, and she swore that it come from Ransom's side o' the fence. And she knows and we know that there isn't a man 'twixt Maine and Californy with a grudge agen Jake, always exceptin' ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... with a spade more'n an hour," said the shiftless one in a tone of deep disgust, "an' I'm tired plumb to death. I'll lay down before that fire an' sleep till mornin', ef every one uv you will promise not to say a word an' ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... fired. They saw the adobe plaster spatter from a corner of the building just under the man's chin; but that wasn't getting him. They jacked their sights up 50 yards, making it 800 yards; and when next the native showed around the corner they both got him—one plumb ...
— The U-boat hunters • James B. Connolly
... myself but half-way down this slope, or only a little more, when in springing aside to avoid a low bush I missed footing altogether; went hurling down into night, dropped plumb upon another furze-bush—a withered one—and heard and felt it snap under me; struck the cliff-side, bruising my hip, and slid down on loose stones for another few yards. As I checked myself, sprawling, and came to a standstill, ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... were coming up the side nighest us here—we had got just where that spruce, you know, hangs over—when all at once that hump-backed nigger of yours raised a scream like a painter, and flung himself head first against the canoe. Over it went, and he with it—rip, smash, plumb to the bottom!" ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... powerful sick and I can't leave him by hisself none. I brung him out here in de shade so I could watch him and 'tend to him whilst I wuks. Jasper stepped on a old plank what had two rusty nails in it, and both of 'em went up in his foot a fur ways. I done driv dem nails plumb up to dey haids in de north side of a tree and put jimpson weed poultices on Jasper's foot, but it's still powerful ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... the oak, the plumb-tree and the holme, The stock-dove and the blackbird should not come, Whose mooting on the trees does make to grow Rots-curing hyphear, ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... was mistaken. On shipboard, he discovered that there were still depths of misery which he was called upon to plumb. Assigned to a miserable stateroom in an uncomfortable part of the ship, he suffered horribly from seasickness, and for the first half of the voyage lay foodless and spiritless in his bunk, indifferent to his environment or to his fate. His sole friend was his ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... in an honest employ from London, aboard of the Princess, Captain Plumb, commander, of which ship he was second mate. He left England November, 1719, and arrived at Guinea about February following and being at Anamaboe, taking in slaves for the West Indies, was taken in the said ship ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various
... country, there is apparently very little difference between them; but still there is a difference, and of no small importance in a moral point of view. The country peculiarity is like the bloom of the plumb, or the down of the peach, which the fingers of infancy cannot touch without injuring; but this felt but not describable quality of the town character, is as the varnish which brings out more vividly the colours of a picture, and which may be freely and even rudely ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... to be any picnic, boys," he said. "We've got to take our time and keep our eyes open. Dakota ain't no spring chicken, and if he don't want to come with us peaceable, he'll make things plumb lively." ...
— The Trail to Yesterday • Charles Alden Seltzer
... a pattern, they fitted me exactly. Three hundred tailors were employed in the same manner to make me clothes; but they had another contrivance for taking my measure. I kneeled down, and they raised a ladder from the ground to my neck; upon this ladder one of them mounted, and let fall a plumb-line from my collar to the floor, which just answered the length of my coat; but my waist and arms I measured myself. When my clothes were finished, which was done in my house (for the largest of theirs ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift
... the maire had written in my note-book, that there might be no mistake, appeared to be of that peculiar mental calibre which warrants Yorkshire peasants in describing a man as 'half-rocked,' or 'not plumb.' His wife, on the other hand, was one of those neat, gentle, sensible women, of whom one wonders how they ever came to marry such thick-lipped and blear-eyed men. Between them they informed me that if I did not object to share a room, I could be ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... properly handled," said he, rising triumphantly and slapping the dust off his palms. "The chassis needs truing up, the equilibrator has sagged out of plumb, and the ailerons have got to be readjusted, but it's only a matter of a few days at the outside ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... wo'n out w'en he come to his house. He opens the doh quick an' slams it shut; den he heahs de cat a-scratchin' on de doh an kinda' sniffin' 'bout, an' Lijah, he lays down on de bed plumb ...
— The Cat in Grandfather's House • Carl Henry Grabo
... plumb the depth of the bitterness in this old man's heart, as he lay among his pillows, his head moving feebly from side to side, his attenuated fingers plucking at the coverlet, his tongue stealing slowly along his cracked and burning lips. Fragments of his life ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... "I'm plumb all right ag'in, Dave, now you're back," she answered, squeezing his hand hard. "But land's sakes, Dave, how ever did you git all that blood ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... or she also possessed a copy of the book. But—well, can you conceive any one copying out and posting one of these letters, or even taking it as the basis for composition? You cannot. That shows how little you know of your fellow-creatures. Not you nor I can plumb the abyss at the bottom of which such humility is possible. Nevertheless, as we know by that great and constant 'demand,' there the abyss is, and there multitudes are at the bottom of it. Let's peer down... No, all is darkness. But faintly, if ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... sitting with a plumb-line in his hand, taking the measurements of a new boat, which was to be bigger and statelier than any of the others, so that it was ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie
... yer course north by northwest three p'ints and ye'll hit the Red Star plumb in the eye—if ye don't miss it," and the miner laughed ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Ozarks • Frank Gee Patchin
... tricks will answer with t'other, who misses the whipping off the end of a gasket, as soon as any first luff of us all. And so I'll just go about the business in earnest; get the carpenter up with his plumb-bob, and set every thing as straight up-and-down as ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... right plumb in the middle o' the seat, as much as to say, 'Walk, goldarn yeh, who cares!' But a man that sets in the corner o' the seat, much as to say, 'Jump in-cheaper t' ride 'n to walk,' you can ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... team to take the first innings. So they went at it, the whole four hundred and fifty, praying around the altar, very hopefully, and doing their level best. They prayed an hour—two hours—three hours—and so on, plumb till noon. It wa'n't any use; they hadn't took a trick. Of course they felt kind of ashamed before all those people, and well they might. Now, what would a magnanimous man do? Keep still, wouldn't he? Of course. What ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the notion of speeding you up a bit," he said, "because I felt plumb sure that there wasn't a live man in the place, nothing but a ...
— General John Regan - 1913 • George A. Birmingham
... which cannot be precisely formulated are better fitted to symbolize life to us than the rigidly geometrical. The same experience has taught us that the curvilinear forms are closer to life than the angular; hence again the tendency, for aesthetic purposes, to introduce minute departures from the plumb-line and rule. There is, however, a type of life specifically human, the life of reason, which is best symbolized by mathematical relations; hence the Greeks, and all those who have followed the classical ideal, all who have had a passion for reason, have felt the circle and the square, ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... caught all the tones they gave out. He gathered knowledge like a true and indefatigable political bee. This walking Bayle dictionary did not act, however, like that famous lexicon; he did not report all opinions without drawing his own conclusions; he had the talent of a fly which drops plumb upon the best bit of meat in the middle of a kitchen. In this way he came to be regarded as an indispensable helper to statesmen. A belief in his capacity had taken such deep root in all minds that the more ambitious public men felt it was necessary to ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... ashamed of a harelip and warts in New Mexico. But you got me wrong; I'm plumb proud of you, and just to prove it I aim to make you carry our bank-roll in your name. That's how she stands at the bank, and that's how she's goin' to stand. From time to time you can gimme a check for what you think I'm wuth. Now then, do with me as you will; grab your lid; we'll ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... appears less, it comes or it lags behind, It comes from its embower'd garden and looks pleasantly on itself and encloses the world, Perfect and clean the genitals previously jetting,and perfect and clean the womb cohering, The head well-grown proportion'd and plumb, and the bowels and joints ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... before him slipped out of plumb. The sky and the lawn seemed to alter positions, to rotate madly as in a vortex. The whirling ceased and the next instant Sutter stood on the shore of a lonely sea with a tawny width of sand stretching out before him and the waves washing up almost ...
— Made in Tanganyika • Carl Richard Jacobi
... his associates as a man of splendid and many-sided vitality. A college classmate, Dr. John Denison, graphically describes him, "A sort of cataclysm of health, like other cyclones from the South seas"; what the Tennessee mountaineers call "plumb survigrous"; an islander, with the high courage and jollity of the tar; "a kind of mental as well as physical amphibiousness." Extraordinary in his training and versatility; able to "manage a boat in a storm, teach a school, edit a newspaper, assist in carrying on a ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... Pete, as he fumbled with his straps about the patient burros, "are plumb pizen t' ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... Carolina right after the war. They rode everywhere night and day scaring everybody. They wouldn't let no colored people hold office. That governor was a colored man. The Ku Klux whipped both black and white folks. They run the Yankees plumb out er ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... parents to throw water in his face. Chip told her exactly what he had told the Old Man, in exactly the same tone; so the Countess retreated, declaring that he wouldn't be let to act that way if he was her kid, and that he was plumb ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... lumber-mill that had once kept it busy was burned down, and the business had slipped away to the prosperous neighbouring town of Machias. There were nice old houses with tall pillars in front of them, now falling into decay and slipping out of plumb. There were shops that had evidently been closed for years, with not even a sign "To Let" in the windows. Our dinner was cooked for us in a boarding-house, by a brisk young lady of about fifteen years, whose mother had gone to Machias for a day in the gay world. With one exception that pleasant ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... suffrage. The committee met and published an address in favor of manhood suffrage, and said nothing as to woman suffrage. Shortly afterwards the same committee summoned C. V. Eskridge, T. C. Sears, P. B. Plumb, I. D. Snoddy, B. F. Simpson, J. B. Scott, H. N. Bent, Jas. G. Blunt, A. Akin, and G. W. Crawford—all opposed to woman suffrage—to make a canvass for negro suffrage. They were instructed that "they would be allowed to express their own sentiments ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... impossible to sound great depths. Scientific men have, therefore, taxed their brains to invent instruments for sounding the deep sea—for touching the bottom in what sailors call "blue water." Some have tried it with a silk thread as a plumb-line, some with spun-yarn threads, and various other materials and contrivances. It has even been tried by exploding petards and ringing bells in the deep sea, when it was supposed that an echo or reverberation might be heard, and, from the known rate at which sound travels through water, the ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne
... back, leaving the old man absorbed in ecstasy, and tried to see if the light, falling plumb upon the canvas at which he pointed, had neutralized all effects. They examined the picture, moving from right to left, standing directly before it, bending, swaying, ...
— The Hidden Masterpiece • Honore de Balzac
... one quiet golden glow. War? Who could think of War? . . . Nicky-Nan at any rate let the thought of it slip into the sea of his private trouble. It was as though he had hauled up some other man's "sinker" and, discovering his mistake, let it drop back plumb. ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... own shoulder. Still, as his arms were extended to the utmost, the county Leitrim-man fancied he was performing much better than common. Jamie had correct notions of the perpendicular, from having used the plumb-bob so much, though even he made the trifling mistake of presenting arms with the lock outwards. As for the Yankees, they were all tolerably exact, in everything but time, and the line; bringing their pieces down, one after another, much as they were in the practice ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... feebleness of the hypogastric muscles, to accumulation of fat under the skin and in the omentum, and to dilation of the stomach and intestines. In the "wall exercise," the patient stands erect against an absolutely straight and plumb wall, lifts his hands (carrying a weight) straight over the head, and causes them to describe a semicircle forward. Zantz particularly insists upon arm and leg exercise for the obese, especially the former, since with the same amount of effort a larger ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 821, Sep. 26, 1891 • Various
... kind o' message like to set it plumb-true under the sky. Us caan't lift it, but if I pull a plank or two out o' the pig's house an' put a harrow chain round 'em, we could get the cross on an' let a horse pull un up theer to the hill, and set un up. Then us would ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... ranch, and she was scared of the thunder and lightning. That's every word of sense I could get outa her. She ain't altogether ignorant—she knows how to climb on a horse, anyway, and she kicked about having to ride sideways on account of her skirts. She was plumb out of her head, and talked wild, but she handled her reins like a rider. And she never mentioned Bob, nor anybody else excepting some fellow she called Charlie. She thought I was him, but she only talked to me friendly. She didn't pull ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower
... sea, I go as a simple sailor, right before the mast, plumb down into the forecastle, aloft there to the royal mast-head. True, they rather order me about some, and make me jump from spar to spar, like a grasshopper in a May meadow. And at first, this sort of thing is unpleasant enough. It touches ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... the United States in 1837-1839 and in England in 1864-1866, large houses and powerful institutions of credit had maintained a whole scaffolding of speculation which was already out of plumb, but still able to stand upright through the general effect of the parts which connected them, and in this unstable equilibrium it sufficed for a single one to detach itself in order to overthrow the whole edifice at a juncture at which it was hoped ...
— A Brief History of Panics • Clement Juglar
... mode, as taken from Steele's "Shipmaster's Assistant," was this: Drop plumb-line over stem of ship and measure distance between such line and the after part of the stern port at the load water-mark; then measure from top of said plumb-line in parallel direction with the water to ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... rider of the range, plumb rough an' on-refined, An' wild an' keerless in my ways, like others of my kind; A reckless cuss in leather chaps, an' tanned an' blackened so You'd think I wuz a Greaser from the plains of Mexico. I never ...
— Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp • Various
... perfect still. Day by day, Arthur discovered new charms in Angela; here some hidden knowledge, there an unsuspected grace, and everywhere an all-embracing charity and love. Day by day he gazed deeper into the depths of her mind, and still there were more to plumb. For it was a storehouse of noble thoughts and high ambitions—ambitions, many of which could only find fulfilment in another world than this. And, the more he saw of her, the prouder he was to think that such a perfect creature should so dearly love himself; ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... permanent central calm, who could say? Certainly nobody knew or was likely to know; for the Master of Saint Bede's was a person, the depth of whose nature could not be fathomed easily with any line. Possibly because, old as he was, it happened, as does happen in some lives, that the right plumb-line, by the right hand, had ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... plane which contains the style; and the most simple way of drawing it on the dial will be by suspending a plummet from some point of the style whence it may hang freely, and waiting until the shadows of both style and plumb-line coincide on the dial. This single shadow will be ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... told us we was free. That is how I came to know it. He came out there on the farm and said, 'Well, you all free as I am. You can stay here if you want to or you can go somewhere else.' We stayed. Mama stayed there on the farm plumb till she come to town. I don't know how many years. I was there in town and so she come onto town later. Moved in with the people she was with. They gave up their place. I was nineteen years old when I left the country. My mother gave me her consent,—to marry then, too. She ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Arkansas Narratives Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... a cat's a plumb fool," declared Cap'n Amazon. "They'll desert ship as soon as wink. Treacherous critters, the hull tribe. Why, when I was up country in Cuba once, I stopped at a man's hacienda and he had a tame wildcat—had had it from a kitten. Brought it up on a ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... wicket because he did not want to stand up to his knees in grass. The captain of the Burtington team was the local publican, a hearty man who told us in the same breath that he was very glad to see us, and that he had played cricket for thirty years, boy and man. His name was Plumb, and I liked him very much; he played in both braces and a belt, because he told us belts were ticklish things and braces sometimes burst. I answered that it was always well to be on the safe side, and we had quite a confidential ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... said. "You looked so pale an' pasty, you had me plumb scared, Tom! I couldn't wake you nohow!" Worriedly the cook added, "What you need is a good beefsteak and some sunshine. You been under water ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton
... see," explained the driver in his slow way, "hit was like this. That there saloon were plumb full of sailor-men all exceptin' you an' me. I was a heap admirin' of the way you handled that big hombre what opened the meetin' and also his two pardners, who aimed to back his play. Hit was sure pretty work. The rest of the crowd sort o' ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... fetched it from the far town. He held his breath as he threw open the lid. There they lay, the half-forgotten symbols of his old life. Worn mallets, chisels, the head of a broken hod with the plaster still caked into it, a short broad shovel for mixing mortar, a trowel, a spirit level, a plumb, all wrapped loosely in a worn leather apron. He took the mallets in his hand and turned them about with the quick little jerks that came so naturally to him. Strength for the work had come into his arms. All the old ambitions ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly
... thinking," continued Breem, "since Bennett there belonged to the camp, and since we kind of misused the fellow for being stingy—for which we ought to have been smashed with logs—that we have a kind of a claim on 'em, as 'twere, and they on us. And we must get 'em out of that yonder before they freeze plumb solid." He ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... now plumb speechless and kind of weak. And on top of these blows up comes Aunt Mollie the new-wed, and ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... Uncle Bill, we were blamed proud to be Red Cross when we knew what was doing about Italy. It was plumb great. You know it all of course. But I saw it. No worse fight ever—in all history. Towns turned into a rolling river of refugees. Hungry, filthy, rain-soaked, half-clad—old, babies, sick—a multitude pitiful beyond words—stumbling, ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... sky an' sunshine, an' the temper o' the breeze. Here's the weather I would fashion could I run things as I please— Beauty dancin' all around me, music ringin' everywhere, Like a weddin' celebration. Why, I've plumb fergot my care An' the tasks I should be doin' fer the rainy days to be, While I'm huggin' the delusion that God made ...
— All That Matters • Edgar A. Guest
... "Plumb locoed," Bill described the excited seekers. "The government's charging $2.50 to $4.00 an acre for that land. I drive 'em right over vacant homesteads just as good for $1.25. Think they'll ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... cleared at last. Joe Ferris, who had started on the hunt with misgivings, had no misgivings whatever now. He confided in Lincoln, not without a touch of pride in his new acquaintance, that this was a new variety of tenderfoot, altogether a "plumb ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... harnesses, hoofthuds lowringing in the baking causeway. Thick feet that woman has in the white stockings. Hope the rain mucks them up on her. Countrybred chawbacon. All the beef to the heels were in. Always gives a woman clumsy feet. Molly looks out of plumb. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... And she was going to carry the sail to drive her. I took particular pains to get the measurements of her mainmast while it lay on the dock under the shears. It was eighty-seven feet—and she only a hundred and ten feet over all—and it stepped plumb in the middle of her, further forward than a mainmast was generally put in a fisherman. To that was shackled a seventy-five foot boom, and eighty-odd tons of pig-iron were cemented close down to her keel, and that floored over and stanchioned ...
— The Seiners • James B. (James Brendan) Connolly
... disdainfully. "Hello, dere, foolish! What yo' think Ah am anyhow? To' must think Ah'm plumb crazy," and Sam looked pityingly at George. "Ob co'se Ah wouldn't nebber ...
— The Go Ahead Boys and the Treasure Cave • Ross Kay
... makes a lot of difference what the motive is, and you've suffered your share of punishment, too. It's the right of every man to begin afresh. Avoid mud and give yo' horse a firm take-off, and he'll leap as clean as a whistle for you. Lawd, Ah'm getting plumb religious," ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... in some mighty-mouthed hollow That's plumb-full of hush to the brim; I've watched the big, husky sun wallow In crimson and gold, and grow dim, Till the moon set the pearly peaks gleaming, And the stars tumbled out, neck and crop; And I've thought that ...
— The Spell of the Yukon • Robert Service
... Beecher is evidently endeavoring to shore up the walls of the falling temple. He sees the cracks; he knows that the building is out of plumb; he feels that the foundation is insecure. Lies can take the place of stones only so long as they are thoroughly believed. Mr. Beecher is trying to do something to harmonize superstition and science. ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... George. But I don't mean to go into 'em. All that's dead and gone. There was a pack of fellows then on my shoulders—I was plumb tired of 'em. I had to get rid of—I did get rid of 'em—and you, too. I knew you were inquiring after me, and I didn't want inquiries. They didn't suit me. You may conclude what you like. I tell you those times are dead ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... answered," he said. "For the miracle to happen, in fact, the sieve must be held as level as the top rail of a mason's T-shaped plumb-line frame, and as steady as if clamped in a vise. For a woman to carry water in a sieve the weather must be dry, for in damp weather the water would run through the meshes, even if the threads or wires were just oily enough and not too oily, even if the meshes were just the right ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... be further from the mark than to say that Will tried to take advantage of Maga's youth and savagery. Fred and I had shared a dozen lively adventures with him without more than beginning yet to plumb the depths of his respect for Woman. Only an American in all the world knows how to meet Young Woman eye to eye with totally unpatronizing frankness, and he was without guile in the matter. But not so she. We did ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... been to school when I got her; she was plumb ignorant. But she's got all the airs of a fine lady now. Sometimes I go without sugar, ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... mine why it's my own. So take me ritely, now is your time to look about ee. Then indeed! If so, why so be it; yea ay and amen, a God's name, say I. The fool a held his mouth open, and a down a droppt the plumb. ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... missionary laughed aloud, as he lay on the trail and said, "Plumb crazy! Plumb crazy! Sun's ...
— Flash-lights from the Seven Seas • William L. Stidger
... those almighty tools that do every thing of themselves, without the help of a workman. When the atoms, says he, descend in infinite space (very ingeniously spoken, to make high and low in infinity), they do not fall plumb down, but decline a little from the perpendicular, either obliquely or in a curve; and this declination, says he, from the direct line is the cause of our liberty of will. But, I say, this declination of atoms in their descent was itself either necessary or voluntary. If it was necessary, how then ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen
... Are any of you younger people old enough to remember that Irishman's house on the marsh at Cambridgeport, which house he built from drain to chimney-top with his own hands? It took him a good many years to build it, and one could see that it was a little out of plumb, and a little wavy in outline, and a little queer and uncertain in general aspect. A regular hand could certainly have built a better house; but it was a very good house for a "self-made" carpenter's house, and people praised it, and said how remarkably well the Irishman had succeeded. They never ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... bakin' any othah time o' yeah. De bacon smell ez callin'-like, de kittle rock an' sing, De same way in de wintah dat dey do it in de spring; Dey ain't no use in mopin' 'round an' lookin' mad an' glum Erbout de wintah season, fu' hit's des plumb ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... The cost of living is so high that it's economy to die; and death is so expensive, then, that corpses want to live again. The trusts have robbed us left and right, and there's no remedy in sight; the government is out of plumb and should ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason
... at de sawmill had des got de big log on de kerridge, en wuz start-in' up de saw, w'en dey seed a 'oman runnin' up de hill, all out er bref, cryin' en gwine on des lack she wuz plumb 'stracted. It wuz Tenie; she come right inter de mill, en th'owed herse'f on de log, right in front er de saw, a-hollerin' en cryin' ter her Sandy ter fergib her, en not ter think hard er her, fer it wa'n't no fault er hern. Den Tenie 'membered de tree did n' hab no years, en she wuz ...
— The Conjure Woman • Charles W. Chesnutt
... lower end of the slant tunnel; or both tunnels could be made at the same time. Then a subterranean chamber would be opened out from the slant tunnel. The vertical boring, which need not be wider than necessary to allow a plumb-line to be suspended down it, would enable the architects to determine the point vertically below the point of suspension. The slant tunnel would give the direction of the true north, either from that point or from a point at some known small distance east or west of that point.[19] Thus, ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... nodded with satisfaction when he looked up at the rear facade of Miller's Folly. Near the edge of the roof, was a chimney. A plumb line dropped from the center of the chimney would drop about three feet to the right of the only window ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew
... than the wild bergamot's (q.v.), the bee balm belies its name, for, however frequently bees may come about for nectar when it rises high, only long-tongued bumblebees could get enough to compensate for their trouble. Butterflies, which suck with their wings in motion plumb the depths. The ruby-throated hummingbird - to which the Brazilian salvia of our gardens has adapted itself - flashes about these whorls of Indian plumes just as frequently - of course transferring pollen on his needle-like bill as he darts from flower to flower. Even the protruding stamens ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... said to him, "Try more air, son. You can have the buckboard and a driver every day if you'll go. Try a week or two in one of the cow camps. I'll fix you up plumb comfortable. The ground, and the air next to it—them's the things to cure you. I knowed a man from Philadelphy, sicker than you are, got lost on the Guadalupe, and slept on the bare grass in sheep camps for two weeks. ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... craftsmen that did not need sharp looking after Nobody talks much that does n't say unwise things Not love in word, neither in tongue, but in deed and in truth Notion of private property in truth Only condition of peace in this world is to have no ideas Opinions Out of plumb when they sit side by side Overestimate of our special individuality Pathological piety Perpetual insult to mediocrity Plenty of praying rogues and swearing saints in the world Presumption in favor ...
— Widger's Quotations from the Works of Oliver W. Holmes, Sr. • David Widger
... my soul That subtle ineradicable longing For tender comradeship? It is because I cannot all at once, Through the half-lights and phantom-haunted mists That separate and enshroud us life from life, Discern the nearness or the strangeness of thy paths Nor plumb thy depths. I am like one that comes alone at night To a strange stream, and by an unknown ford Stands, and for a moment yearns and shrinks, Being ignorant of the water, though so quiet it is, So softly murmurous, So silvered by ...
— Alcyone • Archibald Lampman
... days a burden, and leading the power and the wisdom which knew all but could foreknow nothing, into abysses of anguish, suspense, and disappointment such as—Heaven be thanked!—we common men and women are not called upon to plumb. ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... these affairs We wish thee also well aware of this: The atoms, as their own weight bears them down Plumb through the void, at scarce determined times, In scarce determined places, from their course Decline a little—call it, so to speak, Mere changed trend. For were it not their wont Thuswise to swerve, down would they fall, ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... I'd serve notice that this circle business should stop. I wish you'd talk to 'em. I don't count—but they'll listen to you. I'm glad to have met you. I hope you'll come up again. I'd like to mill that business over with you; it's all very curious, but I'm just plumb distracted ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... Sol decidedly. "It's been a shy kind o' moon to-night, an' it's a gittin' so much shyer that it's plumb afraid to show its face. In three minutes it will hide behind a big cloud that's edgin' up over thar, an' we won't see it no ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... to quit!" cried Mr. Snawdor, hysterically. "I can't stand it any longer. I'm a plumb failure and I ain't goin' to ever be anything else. If your maw had taken care of what I had, we wouldn't have been where we are at. Look at the way we live! Like pigs in a pen! We're nothing but pore white ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... feels about it; he must unravel Rabbinical and Talmudic tendencies; he must acquaint himself with the heretical leanings of a certain era, and the shadow cast upon the page by apocryphal tradition. In philosophy he is still worse off, because he must plumb the depths of metaphysical jargon and master the criticism ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... observer's attention, and, indeed, fills him with amazement, as does their construction in general. What instruments of precision did a rude people possess who could raise such walls, angles, monoliths, true and plumb as the work ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... store next door refused to permit access through his basement, and that added many hundred dollars to the cost of building the party wall; the fire and telephone companies were continually fussing around and demanding indemnity because their poles and hydrants got knocked out of plumb; the thousands of gallons of dirty water pumped from the job into the city sewers clogged them up, and the city sued for several thousand dollars' damages; one day the car-tracks in front of the lot settled and ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... he gruffly. "You Mr. Krootzer? Wot? Yes? Well, this kid comes to the station-house and hollers that she's stole a ring and somebody that ain't had anything to do with it is gettin' pinched fer stealin' it. The kid acts plumb bug-house, but Sarge he says fer me to come around and see wot's up. Wot is she, dippy? Did she re'ly steal a di'mond? This don't look like wot you'd call a likely ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... like a 'crazy Jane,'" cried the grandmother, with sudden exasperation. "Yer white sun-bonnet plumb off an' a-hangin' down on yer shoulders, an' yer yaller hair all a-blowsin' at loose eends, stiddier bein' plaited up stiff an' tight an' personable, an' yer face burned pink in the sun, stiddier like yer skin ginerally looks, fine an' white ez a pan o' ...
— The Raid Of The Guerilla - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... lightning an' rain piling up against each other like sin, she came over and sat down beside me and began to feed me. She did that, Alan—fed me. When the lightning fired up, I could see her eyes shining and her lips smilin' as if all that hell about us made her happy, and I thought she was plumb crazy. Before I knew it she was telling me how you pointed me out to her in the smoking-room, and how happy she was that I was goin' her way. Her way, mind you, Alan, not mine. And that's just the way she's kept me goin' ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... Thompson was the most popular engineer who could be found for this work. He did not bother himself much about details or practicabilities of location, but ran merrily along, sighting from the top of one divide to the top of another, and striking "plumb" every town site and big plantation within twenty or thirty miles of his route. In his own language he ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 2. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... required much more blowing and care to fuse the metal than it did to melt lead or pewter. But he succeeded at last, melting down all his spare change to make the small, shining bullet. This was rammed down his gun, a deliberate aim taken, and Dick announced that it had struck the mark plumb in the ...
— The Riflemen of the Miami • Edward S. Ellis
... move," was the laconic but excellent speech of Mr. Henry Plumb. He already had his forefinger on the trigger ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... rapidly moving wheel; and the latter action is that which draws inwardly. Thus the spokes might be likened to centripetal force. The attraction of gravitation in the earth is the centripetal force, and its rotation produces the centrifugal force. When an object, like a plumb bob, or an article floating on the water is free to move, it is found to lag behind the movement of the earth surface, this retarding movement being sufficient to cause it to creep to the west, with the result you ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Conquest of the Savages • Roger Thompson Finlay
... moment one feels that the whole constitutional machine is rocking. It no longer rests squarely on the ground. It is out of plumb. ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... slip around and gather up their guns," said Pringle. "Pick out one for yourself. I left yours where I threw it when I picked it out of your belt. I meant to knock you out, Chris—there wasn't any other way; but I didn't mean to plumb kill you. You hit your head on a rock when you fell. It wouldn't have done any good to have got the drop on you. You had made up your mind not to surrender. You would have shot anyhow; and, of course, ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... like Peterson," answered the doctor's son. "Besides, Peterson isn't so plumb crazy ...
— Out with Gun and Camera • Ralph Bonehill
... before, only more slowly, until ninety feet down, when at last I struck a fine, hearty gush of water. Constant dropping wears away stone. So does constant chipping, while at the same time wearing away the chipper. Father never spent an hour in that well. He trusted me to sink it straight and plumb, and I did, and built a fine covered top over it, and swung two iron-bound buckets in it from which we all drank for ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... slowly and inexorably onward. Then came three resounding crashes as the bombs dropped. One got the corner of a hangar and demolished it. Another burst into the open and did no damage, but the third fell plumb between two machines waiting to go up and left ...
— Tam O' The Scoots • Edgar Wallace
... a laugh. "That was saying something, Jimmy. You surely hit the bull's-eye plumb in the center that time. Guess that will hold ...
— The Radio Boys at the Sending Station - Making Good in the Wireless Room • Allen Chapman
... a term applied to surfaces that are parallel to that of still water, or perpendicular to the direction of the plumb-line; and when it is desired to ascertain the altitude of any specified locality, the level of the ocean's surface is always taken as the standard from which such ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume VIII, No 25: May 21, 1887 • Various
... knowing who your father was than to know he was so mean that you are glad he's dead. Your way leaves you hoping that he was just awful nice, and got killed, or was taken sick or something; my way, there ain't no doubts in your mind. You are plumb sure he wasn't decent. Don't ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... dropped clean down, soft and plumb, into the water. Gudrun was swaying violently in her boat, the agitated water shook with transient lights, she realised that it was faintly moonlight, and that he was gone. So it was possible to be gone. A terrible sense of fatality robbed her of all feeling and thought. She knew he ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... "did you ever hear about that prospector that found a thousand pounds of gold in one chunk? He was lost on the desert, plumb out of water and forty miles from nowhere. He couldn't take the chunk along with him and if he left it there the sand would cover it up. Now what was that ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... in any sort of a hurry. If you start across the bay now before it gets plumb dark old Bill Broome is liable to ketch yer," and the aged fellow gave Jim a shrewd look from under ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt
... fact that the eye and hand need such guides shows how untrustworthy the senses are. A similar argument occurs in Luc. 86. Perpendiculum is a plumb line, norma a mason's square, the word being probably a corruption of the Greek [Greek: gnomon] (Curt. Grundz p. 169, ed. 3), regula, ...
— Academica • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... unaccustomed channel without a pilot. "I don't see as it's any use, Fisbee," he said, morosely, after a series of efforts that littered the floor in every direction. "I'm a born compositor, and I can't shift my trade. I stood the pace fairly for a week, but I'll have to give up; I'm run plumb dry. I only hope they won't show him our Saturday with your three columns of 'A Word of the Lotus Motive,' reprinted from February. I begin to sympathize with the boss, because I know what he felt when I ballyragged him ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... me for saying that I don't think she's too good for you—and even if she were she'd have to marry somebody, you know—and when you put it, put it straight, and let Paris and everything else you're worrying about go plumb to hell! And ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... proportion to the slopes themselves. Precipices rising vertically more than 100 feet are very rare among the secondary hills of which we are speaking. I am not aware of any cliff in England or Wales where a plumb-line can swing clear for 200 feet; and even although sometimes, with intervals, breaks, and steps, we get perhaps 800 feet of a slope of 60 deg. or 70 deg., yet not only are these cases very rare, but even ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... "Granny always keeps it handy. It cures lots of people. Now there was Bud Ellis—the doctors just guv him up. They said he didn't have a single lung left, and he come around to Granny. He used to make fun of Granny; but now he wuz plumb scairt. At first Granny chased him away; then when she seen that he was awful sick, she got sorry and told him how to make Lung Balm. He was to make two gallons each time and bring it to her. Then ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... "Have a good trip? How are all the babies—and Aunt Sarah? You must be plumb worn out, ridin' all the way from Arken-saw on a hot day ...
— The Boy Ranchers on Roaring River - or Diamond X and the Chinese Smugglers • Willard F. Baker
... and Sicilian radishes. Our commodore, therefore, having with him garden-seeds of all kinds, and stones of different kinds of fruits, sowed here lettuces, carrots, and other garden-plants, and set in the woods great numbers of plumb, apricot, and peach-stones, for the better accommodation of our countrymen who might hereafter touch at this island. These last have since thriven most remarkably, as has been since learnt by Mr Anson. For some Spanish gentlemen having been taken on their ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr |
