"Plumb" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ask 'what brig's that?' But none of these 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 back of ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... austerely smiling, the heavens of a cold blue, and sown with great cloud islands, and the mountain-sides mapped forth into provinces of light and shadow. A short walk restored me to myself, and renewed within me the resolve to plumb this mystery; and when, from the vantage of my knoll, I had seen Felipe pass forth to his labours in the garden, I returned at once to the residencia to put my design in practice. The Senora appeared plunged in slumber; I stood a ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... out in the blue-green water and all ringing and singing to the chime of the sea. Inland, canons of night and shoulders of dolerite and plains where nothing grew leading to great level bastions, fortifications that seemed built by rule and plumb line, with the markings of the basalt visible through the clear air. Basalt has that terrible peculiarity. It seems the work of a hand, it makes castles and fortifications whose ruled markings bear ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... pretty free stepper in the mazes of the dance, and once, when she was balancing partners with Doodums, she kicked out sort of playful to give him a love pat and fetched him a clip with her tootsey that gave him water on the kneepan. It ought to have been a warning to Doodums, but he was plumb infatuated, and went around pretending that he'd been kicked by a horse. After that the boys used to make Honeybunch mighty mad when she came out of dark corners with Doodums, by feeling him to see if any of his ribs were broken. Still he didn't take ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... straining for originality, but regardless of what expression may have been found by those who have gone before, and fearless of the tyranny of opinion. Above all, let them dare to look into their own souls, to look well and long, to plumb the depths in silent meditation. Those who do so, must then dare to reveal what they have seen. This self-communing is not a self-incarceration within an egoistic personality. Those who engage in it will strike ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... part and the cricket match in the second. After commenting upon the truth of the former description, he went on to criticize the latter. Do you remember that match? You do? Very well. You recall how Tom wins the toss on a plumb wicket?' ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... hardwood is fixed vertically in the ground; it is carefully adjusted with the aid of plumb lines, and the possibility of its sinking deeper into the earth is prevented by passing its lower end through a hole in a board laid horizontally on the ground, its surface flush with the surface of the ground which is carefully smoothed. ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... mountain, it had the appearance of an infinite number of rocks cut into conical forms, and built one upon another to a prodigious height. Upon a nearer view, each cone appeared of itself a mountain; and the tout ensemble compose an enormous mass of the Lundus Helmonti, or plumb-pudding stone, fourteen miles in circumference, and what the Spaniards call two leagues in height. As it is like unto no other mountain, so it stands quite unconnected with any, though not very distant from some very lofty ones. Near the base of it, on the south side, are ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, 1777 - Volume 1 (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
... a moral tome, an' no prevarication. It was plumb drippin' with moral from start to finish. You see Eve she set the ball a-rollin' when she swiped them apples. That was where she done dead wrong, and that was the 'Sin' as mentioned in the name of the book, an' old W. P. Mills he showed in that literary ...
— Kilo - Being the Love Story of Eliph' Hewlitt Book Agent • Ellis Parker Butler
... of halfe the earth is (as shall be shewed) about 4000 miles, now the plumb height of the highest mountaines is not accounted aboue a mile and a halfe, or two miles at the most. Now betweene two miles and foure thousand, there is no sensible proportion, and a line that is foure thousand and two miles long, will not seeme sensibly longer ...
— A Briefe Introduction to Geography • William Pemble
... principal are plantains, of which they have fifteen different sorts or varieties; breadfruit; two sorts of fruit found at Otaheite, and known there under the names of jambu and geevee; the latter a kind of plumb; and vast numbers of shaddocks, which, however, are found as often in ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... 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 ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... it suddenly chooses the economical plane trajectory, after spending its larval leisure in roaming tortuous passages full of irregular curves; it bends it in an arc which allows it to turn about; and, with its head held plumb with the adjacent surface, it goes straight ahead ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... straighten the axle, while you see what ails that cussed motor. Good golly! We'll be here all night at this rate. And if we keep on hopping over this field like a lame crow, we'll be plumb outa gas. For a mechanic that can make a motor, Bland, you sure ain't making much of ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... about 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 base of the conning tower. A line C, from the top of the water to the center of the ...
— The Boy Volunteers with the Submarine Fleet • Kenneth Ward
... General Sheridan wanted also to do something beneficial for the cavalry, in which he felt much the same special interest that I did in the artillery. So a sort of alliance, offensive and defensive, was formed, which included as its most active and influential member Senator Plumb of Kansas, to obtain the necessary funds and build a suitable post and establish at Fort Riley a school of cavalry and light artillery. The result finally attained, when I was in command of the army, is well known, and is an honor to ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... eat, and I can't cook—never cooked any in my life." P.: "Then I'll tell you what you do; you go to Capt. Grigg and tell him you want a man detailed to cook some rations to do you home; tell him you are going with Gantt, and that you will stay away from here until you are plumb well of the each." The young recruit bolted to the Captain, who soon set him straight ...
— The Southern Soldier Boy - A Thousand Shots for the Confederacy • James Carson Elliott
... the foundation, as shown by Fig. 13. As previously noted, this foundation face had been built very carefully to line. The back end of the form, of course, was blocked tightly against the end of the previously finished section, and the top was made plumb by the adjusting screwjacks shown in Fig. 16, B. At first these screws were -in., but they were afterward changed to 1-in. The only points which it was necessary for the alignment corps to give in setting these forms ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXVIII, Sept. 1910 - The Bergen Hill Tunnels. Paper No. 1154 • F. Lavis
... rock itself, his fore feet planted close together, the fore legs rigid and straight as the shaft of a lance, while the hind legs pose easily in attendance upon them. "The cimmaron always strikes plumb-centre, and he never makes a mistake," is Mr. Kemeys's laconic comment; and we can recognize the truth of the observation in this image. Perfectly at home and comfortable on its almost impossible perch, the cimmaron curves ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... himself, with a slight duck of the head of careless acknowledgment. Then he glanced with slumbering anger at the stove. "Smoke, we'll have to dig up a new stove. That fire-box is burned plumb into the oven ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... it on horses over into Ohio to get it milled. Took Pa five days to make the trip; an' then the blame old squaws 'ud come, an' Ma 'ud be compelled to hand over to 'em her big white loaves. Jest about set her plumb crazy. Used to get up in the night, an' fix her yeast, an' bake, an' let the oven cool, an' hide the bread out in the wheat bin, an' get the smell of it all out o' the house by good daylight, so's 'at she could say there wasn't a loaf ...
— The Song of the Cardinal • Gene Stratton-Porter
... on the gunwales, as easily as a hat-box. And many men are clumsy or careless with a boat, while others are lubberly by nature. Her dimensions are: Length, 10 1/2 feet; beam, 26 inches; rise at center, 9 inches: at seams, 15 inches; oval red elm ribs, 1 inch apart; an inch home tumble; stems, plumb and sharp; oak keel and keelson; clinker-built, ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears
... data which he had derived from his metric photograph, from plumb line, level, compass, and tape, astronomical triangle, vertices, zenith, pole and sun, declination, azimuth, solar time, parallactic angles, refraction, and a dozen ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... yet," was Aleck Pop's comment. "I was finkin' dat rascal was plumb dead, suah. And Dan, too! Suah yo' ...
— The Rover Boys on the Great Lakes • Arthur M. Winfield
... where we c'n sit an' study natur' a bit, before we turns back. An' thinkin' it's safe t' do so, I lets go o' Bull's halter. An' while I'm studyin' an' takin' a nip from a flask I happens t' have in my jeans, I forgets Bull for a minit, an' when I looks up, he's plumb absent. ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... those who are nervous should screw their courage to the sticking-place, and give grave attention to that awful moral lesson, for all of us have a little of Barry in our composition. Thackeray's sudden inspiration enabled him to plumb the deeps of the scoundrel nature, and he saw with the eye of genius that the very quality which makes a bad man dangerous is his belief in his own goodness. If you look at the appalling narrative of Lyndon's ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... the darts to scatter and to cover a wide area. As the rotary motion of the arrows increases during the fall, the direct line of flight becomes more pronounced until at last they assume a vertical direction free from all wobbling, so that when they alight upon the target they are quite plumb. ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... have been about five o'clock," was the reply. "He was plumb sick, too, for they carried him out in a wheel-chair, with a ...
— Boy Scouts in the Canal Zone - The Plot Against Uncle Sam • G. Harvey Ralphson
... my optics, or am I gone plumb locoed?" bellowed the amazed captain, as he saw the little craft dancing lightly on the ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Eagle Patrol • Howard Payson
... world's coarse thumb And finger failed to plumb, So passed in making up the main account; All instincts immature, All purposes unsure, That weighed not as his work, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... was not so simple as that. He was an Italian colored man, black bearded, and shaped like Caruso, only more so, if that is possible; and he sang, because he was a singing machine, but he couldn't have talked. I'll bet on that. He was too plumb afraid. ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... he saw the faint outlines of his neighbor's house ... but those outlines were all wrong. They didn't jibe and fit together ... they were out of plumb. As if some giant hand had grasped the house and wrenched it out of true. Like the house he had seen across the street the night before, the house that had painfully righted itself when he thought ...
— The Street That Wasn't There • Clifford Donald Simak
... night, little more than a week after the Dewey had put out into the North Sea, she ran plumb into a huge warship. The little submarine had taken a position about twenty miles directly west of the great German stronghold at Heligoland in a lane likely to be traveled ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Submarine Fleet • James R. Driscoll
... Whether we shall ever have in England a new tradition of poetic comedy it is difficult at present to say, but we shall assuredly never have it until we realise that comedy is built upon everlasting foundations in the nature of things, that it is not a thing too light to capture, but too deep to plumb. Monsieur Rostand, in his description of the Battle of Wagram, does not shrink from bringing about the Duke's ears the frightful voices of actual battle, of men torn by crows, and suffocated with blood, but when the Duke, terrified at these dreadful appeals, ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... excessively Swift about this place N. 80 W. 3 ms to a pt. on S. S. passed a Isd. Called Sheeco Islan wind from the N W Camped in a Prarie on the L. S., Capt Lewis & my Self Walked out 3 ms. found the Country roleing open & rich, with plenty of water, great qts of Deer I discovered a Plumb which grows on bushes the hight of Hasle, those plumbs are in great numbers, the bushes beare Verry full, about double the Sise of the wild plumb Called the Osage Plumb & am ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... suffer.' BOSWELL. 'Would you eat your dinner that day, Sir?' JOHNSON. 'Yes, Sir; and eat it as if he were eating it with me. Why, there's Baretti, who is to be tried for his life to-morrow, friends have risen up for him on every side; yet if he should be hanged, none of them will eat a slice of plumb-pudding the less. Sir, that sympathetic feeling goes a very little ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... face and twinkling eyes and laughed. "Well, yo're the foreman if you owns that badge," grinned Hopalong, cheerfully. "We don't need no guns, nohow, in this town, we don't. Plumb forgot we was toting them. But mebby you can tell us where lawyer Jeremiah T. ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... to get this inimitable creature, absolutely into my power. Every thing made for me. Her brother and uncles were but my pioneers: her father stormed as I directed him to storm: Mrs. Howe was acted by the springs I set at work; her daughter was moving for me, yet imagined herself plumb against me: and the dear creature herself had already run her stubborn neck into my gin, and knew not that she was caught, for I had not drawn my sprindges close about her—And just as all this was completed, wouldst thou believe, that ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... the next best thing. Sunday afternoon it looked bright to Daisy; but then her heart sank; Sunday evening would be near. What should she do? She could not settle it in her mind what was right; between her mother's anger and her father's love, Daisy could not see what was just the plumb-line of duty. Singing would gain a hundred dollars' worth of good; and not singing would disobey her mother and displease her father; but then came the words of one that Daisy honoured more than father and mother "Remember that thou keep holy the Sabbath day;" and she ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... Nobody's kill't. Just hidin' out in the woods, and mostly from each other. It's a turrible thing." He looked down at himself with a wry grimace. "Not outta shame," he added. "We've seen naked bodies before. Just plumb scared, ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... Afterwards, continuing to follow the same army to certain other strongholds, his evil fortune would have it that he should be killed while attempting to measure certain heights at a difficult point; for when he had put his head out beyond the wall in order to let a plumb-line down, a priest who was with the enemy (who feared the genius of Cecca more than the might of the whole camp) discharged a catapult at him and fixed a great dart in his head, insomuch that the poor fellow died on the spot. The fate and the loss of Cecca caused great grief ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 3 (of 10), Filarete and Simone to Mantegna • Giorgio Vasari
... was that Lucretia had at one time eagerly caught at their well-meant civilities to Helen,—now she as abruptly declined them. Why? It would be hard to plumb into all the black secrets of that heart. It would have been but natural to her, who shrank from dooming Helen to no worse calamity than a virgin's grave, to have designed to throw her into such uncongenial ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... have seen a cable car coming along about that time. The skipper yelled to me to ease off the larboard stay. Now, I might know something about mince pie, but a larboard stay is not my long and hasty. Then some one pushed me aside, and succeeded in putting things in such excellent shape that we ran plumb through the dock. ...
— Billy Baxter's Letters • William J. Kountz, Jr.
... think how Nick will look when he shows his face again. Chances are he'll stick to his house all day Saturday and Sunday; and when school opens on Monday prepare to listen to a tough story of how he got up in the night and in the dark ran plumb up against a half-open door, which would account for his black eye and swollen face. Oh! I know, because I've spun that ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson
... turned to unharness and feed his other dogs. And again, "Well!" And then, after a pause: "Now I know you're plumb crazy. But all the same—Well, it's got me properly beat. Anyhow, crazy or no, I guess you're meat just the same, an', by the great Geewhillikins! you'll be dead meat, an' digested meat at that, before ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... scoundrel," muttered Fred, hoarsely, a worried look showing in his eyes, "I'm getting plumb down to the bottom of anything I ...
— The High School Pitcher - Dick & Co. on the Gridley Diamond • H. Irving Hancock
... to show that when lives get out of plumb, the way to straighten them is not with a violent gesture. That when we do seize them, and try to jerk them straight again, we invariably let ourselves in for long years of unhappiness and remorse. Witness Louellen. In two desperate attempts ... she tries ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... fallen from a former high estate. The old house presented to Maria's fancy something in itself degraded and loathsome. It seemed to partake actually of the character of its inmates—to be stained and swollen and out of plumb with unmentionable sins of degeneration. It was a very poisonous fungus of a house, with blotches of paint here and there, with its front portico supported drunkenly on swaying pillars, with its roof hollowed about the chimney, with great stains here and there upon the ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... 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 ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... all the action and reaction of nature. I cannot doubt that the high laws which each man sees implicated in those processes with which he is conversant, the stern ethics which sparkle on his chisel-edge, which are measured out by his plumb and foot-rule, which stand as manifest in the footing of the shop-bill as in the history of a state,—do recommend to him his trade, and though seldom named, exalt ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... of it the alkali swept in little vagrant puffs, proceeding from the gaps of the hills. It piled in little gray heaps like ashes. The air hung steady and still as a plumb line dropped ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... her the name, myself," he observed, at last. "Seein' I just got her a week ago last Saturday. I ASKED Casper Hoyt what under the canopy possessed him to give her a name like that. Said his father named her. Well, I thought his father must be plumb foolish, or something, but I didn't like to say so to HIM. Seems too bad to waste them gilt letters, or I'd a-had another name on her 'fore this. I wanted to use as many of them letters as I could, an' I thought of callin' her for my aunt, ...
— The Voyage of the Hoppergrass • Edmund Lester Pearson
... woman, really—not all her thoughts." And had Major Durward, honest fellow, realized the volcanic force of passion hidden behind the tense inscrutability of his wife's lovely face, he would have been utterly confounded. We do not plumb the deepest depths even of those ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... cherished view of Imagination. It creates only as a mechanic creates a chest of drawers, a sideboard, a clock, or a watch. It originates not a single material of thought, volition, or action. But, mechanic-like, it works by plumb and rule on all the materials found in the warehouse of memory; and manufactures, out of the same plank of pine, or bar of iron, or wedge of gold, or precious stone, some new utensil, ornament, or adornment never found in Nature. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... of the Emperor’s forces. Say you forgive me, Peachey.’ ‘I do,’ says Peachey. ‘Fully and freely do I forgive you, Dan.’ ‘Shake hands, Peachey,’ says he. ‘I’m going now.’ Out he goes, looking neither right nor left, and when he was plumb in the middle of those dizzy dancing ropes, ‘Cut, you beggars,’ he shouts; and they cut, and old Dan fell, turning round and round and round, twenty thousand miles, for he took half an hour to fall till he struck the water, ...
— The Man Who Would Be King • Rudyard Kipling
... architectural features. Then the main walls were built in brick, the columns were inserted as required, the vaults were thrown, and the whole building was left to settle down. Owing to the enormous amount of mortar used this settling must have been very considerable, and explains why hardly a plumb wall exists in Constantinople, and why so many vaults show a pronounced sinking in at the crown or have fallen in and have been rebuilt. After the walls had set the marble facings, mosaic, and colour were applied and could be easily adapted to the ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen
... 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 talk, until Lambert ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... raised the heavy lid, sliding it to one side. How deep was the black chasm beneath he could not even guess. Doubtless it led into a coal bunker, or it might open over a pit of great depth. There was no way to discover other than to plumb the abyss with his body. Above was ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the stranger. "No! Can't tell a 'bo'? Well, just tramp. Wot's dew name? I lost me card case. Me nom de plumb is Kid, Californy Kid. And me address is—well wot's de name ...
— The Air Ship Boys • H.L. Sayler
... the workers are returning home; they drifted along singly and in crowds, stooping and loitering, shuffling a little after the fatigue of the day. There was a whole new world out here, quite different from that of the "Ark." The houses were new and orderly, built with level and plumb-line; the men went their appointed ways, and one could see at a ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... to home!" laughed the cow-boy. "You just light down and we'll trail over to Chola Charley's and prospect a tub of frijoles. The dinner-bell when you are broke is plumb correct. Got any more of that po'try broke to ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... heads. This phenomenon was so unexpected and startling, that for a moment I thought our faces would be touched by the skirts of the glorious auroral drapery. It did not follow the spheric curve of the firmament, but hung plumb from the zenith, falling, apparently, millions of leagues through the air, its folds gathered together among the stars and its embroidery of flame sweeping the earth and shedding a pale, unearthly radiance over the wastes of snow. A moment afterwards and it was again drawn up, parted, ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... Come, Gracie! In the midst of death we are in life! Nollie was a plumb little idiot. But it's the war—the war! Your father must get used to it; it's a rare chance for ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... he had come to feel that the Senate was becoming less and less desirable each year, and began to lose interest in it. He did not like the rough-and-tumble methods of debate of a number of Western Senators who were coming to take a more prominent place in the Senate. On one occasion Senator Plumb, of Kansas, attacked Senator Edmunds most violently, and without any ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... planet to a yet mightier sun, and each set of systems in its turn circles round a more central sun, and so on—we know not how far may stretch the chain that to us is illimitable; for who is able to plumb the depths and heights of space, or to find a manifested circumference which takes in all universes! Nay, we say that they are infinite in number, and that there is no end to the manifestations of ...
— Avataras • Annie Besant
... passion and a grave happiness. "It's ours—yours! And every stick of the furniture more than half paid for already! I didn't tell you how well we're doing at the store. Say, golly, I sure did have a time training Lena to play the game, like she didn't know us. She thought I was plumb nutty, at first!" ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... yingo, Ay plumb forget about te tarn jung yack-ass Harlan. He coom in har dis noon time drunk like hal, wit t'ree bottle of hootch. He tal me he iss lonesome. He iss drunk now, Chief. He ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... the Doctor, leaning over to knock the ashes from his pipe. "I'm plumb certain she cares for you, and just as certain that you're making a mistake by running away." He stood up and scowled fiercely at the moon. "Well, I must be off. I'll see you to-morrow. You're not going until afternoon, ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour
... an added gentleness to his wife—perhaps a bunch of violets, bought at the florist's on Maple Street where Lily got her flower pots or her bulbs. He was very lonely, and increasingly bothered about Jacky. ... "Lily will let him go plumb to hell. But I put him on the toboggan! ... I'm responsible for his existence," he used to think. And sometimes he repeated the words he had spoken that night when he had felt the first stir of fatherhood, ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... scene 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 ...
— Made in Tanganyika • Carl Richard Jacobi
... say 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
... fact is that just the moment he saw Zena Pepperleigh, Mr. Pupkin was clean, plumb, straight, flat, absolutely in love ...
— Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town • Stephen Leacock
... torrent's course, Their work withstands its mighty force, So damming it from shore to shore, That, gliding smoothly o'er, In even sheets the waters pour. Their work, as it proceeds, they grade and bevel, Or bring it up to plumb or level; First lay their logs, and then with mortar smear, As if directed by an engineer. Each labours for the public good; The old command, the youthful brood Cut down, and shape, and place the wood. Compared with ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... the god, the greater the slave; and so it was that, falling plumb down from that skyey exaltation, human again with the weakness that follows divine moments, Antony returned from the morning ...
— The Worshipper of the Image • Richard Le Gallienne
... him. A square in the floor opened as the trap was flapped back upon its hinges, and through the opening the haltered form shot straight downward to bring up with a great jerk, and after that to dangle like a plumb-bob on a string. Under the quick strain the gallows-arm creaked and whined; in the silence which followed the hangman was heard to exhale his breath in a vast puff of relief. His hand went up to his forehead ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... 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 word of that yarn, even if a plumb stranger told it to me," declared Hazelton. "It has all the earmarks of truth. It's a complete story of just what Bert Dodge would do in one form or another, ...
— Dick Prescott's Third Year at West Point - Standing Firm for Flag and Honor • H. Irving Hancock
... water-jug, which was half full, and leaning out once more, with the jug upright in his two hands, moved it this way and that until he had it, as nearly as he could determine, just over the man beneath him, and then dropped it. The jug fell plumb, and might have killed the man but that he bent his head at the moment, and received it between his shoulders. It knocked the breath out of him, and he lay motionless. The other man fled. The window-stopper, hearing ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... beauty is no chance of hit or miss ... it is inevitable as life ... it is as exact and plumb as gravitation. From the eyesight proceeds another eyesight and from the hearing proceeds another hearing and from the voice proceeds another voice eternally curious of the harmony of things with man. To these ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... keeps your P.D. exercised and won't let anybody but himself ride him. He says you will need him. For you can't budge the stubborn little cuss. He declares you're coming back. When we tell him you're worth twenty millions and he's plumb full of primitive foolishness and general ignorance of the outside world, he says, 'Si, he will come back!' like some heathen oracle that's strong on repetition and ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... mailed my other letter I was afraid that you would think me plumb bold about the little Bo-Peep, and was a heap sorrier than you can think. If you only knew the hardships these poor men endure. They go two together and sometimes it is months before they see another soul, and rarely ever a woman. I wouldn't act so ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... level, and came out of the woods. The path now led along the edge of a precipice descending sheer to the uppermost terrace of the valley he had left. The valley was but a cleft in the mass of the mountain: a little way over sank its other wall, steep as a plumb-line could have made it, of solid rock. On his right lay green fields of clover and strange grasses. Ever and anon from the cleft steamed up great blinding clouds of mist, which now wandered about over ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... Pete, as he fumbled with his straps about the patient burros, "are plumb pizen t' ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... snake oil!" Chow 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 ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton
... I should howl. After you got under way they began to drift before the wind. We fought them all night, and if we'd let them go they'd been plumb into Colorado by this time. I don't want any more such ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... 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 ...
— Alcyone • Archibald Lampman
... Then, each in his place, lieutenants, sergeants, drivers, the six-horse teams leaning on the firm traces, the big wheels clucking, the long Napoleons shining like gold, and the cannoneers—oh, God bless the lads!—planted on limbers and caissons, with arms tight folded and backs as plumb as the meridian. Now three of the pieces, half the battery, have ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... sentiment offer nothing corresponding to the old conception of patron saints. If they did there would be a Patron Saint of Plumbers, and this would alone be a revolution, for it would force the individual craftsman to believe that there was once a perfect being who did actually plumb. ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... small. Her face was a most perfect book of cleverness, yet she was fair, too, beyond belief, with hair of a lovely ruddiness, cut short in the new fashion, and bunching on her shoulders. And eyes! Gods! who could plumb the depths of Phorenice's eyes, or find in mere tint a trace of ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... didn't I tell you I shook hands with this boy an' was plumb glad to meet him?" demanded Laddy, with considerable heat. Manifestly he had been affronted. "Tom Beldin', he's a gentleman, an' he could lick you in—in half a second. How about ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... Lorrigan. Say! If you ain't got any place to go—why—I've got a ranch and about twenty-five hundred head of cattle and some horses. If you didn't mind marrying me, I could take you out there and give yuh a home. I'd be plumb good to you, if you're ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... Sourcraut tenantry. All drew back in horror, to let one so anathematised pass without contact. I coiled myself up near a droll-looking little postilion, who, while turning up the whites of his eyes, was coaxing me to him with a fragment of plumb-cake, which he had stolen from the banquet-table. Dr. Direful returned to the centre of the room, and mounted a desk to commence his lecture. The auditory crowded and cowered timidly round him, while he, looking ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, Number 489, Saturday, May 14, 1831 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... fishing village is composed of leaning shacks blown out of plumb by heavy winds. Along the beach on bamboo racks the nets are hanging out to dry. At night the little fleet puts out for Punta Gorda, where a ruined watch-tower—a protection against Moro pirates—stands half hidden among creeping vines. ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... 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
... whar'd I hear thet name? I got a plumb good memory fer names an' faces. 'Pears I heerd thet name in Cheyenne, last summer.... I got it. Cowpuncher named Panhandle rode down street draggin' a bolt of red calico thet unwound an' stampeded all the hosses. Might thet lad have happened to ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... as dead as Hannibal now!" added Archer, as, having spun up three hundred feet into the air, and flown twice as many hundred yards, it turned over, and fell plumb, like a ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... stood up with a light in his eyes. "Then you've hit the thing plumb where you wanted," he said. "Whose standing in with Alton of ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... bearing value on irregular surfaces as well as the bearing due to taper in piles, and lastly the resistance offered by binding, enter into the determination of so-called skin friction formulas. The essential condition of sinking a caisson is keeping it plumb; and binding, which is another way of writing increased bearing value, will ...
— Pressure, Resistance, and Stability of Earth • J. C. Meem
... building the Ecole des Beaux Arts can build, the charge for repairs is not to be wholly ignored, and at least the Cathedral of Chartres, in spite of terribly hard usage, is as solid to-day as when it was built, and as plumb, without crack or crevice. Even the towering fragment at Beauvais, poorly built from the first, which has broken down oftener than most Gothic structures, and seems ready to crumble again whenever the wind ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... twisted twigs, on which he leans his back, and jerking up his withe before him, he foots it up with wonderful speed and certainty, and comes down again in the same manner, bringing his gourd full of liquor on his arm. Among their fruits are many kinds of plumbs; one like a wheaten plumb is wholesome and savoury; likewise a black one, as large as a horse plumb, which is much esteemed, and has an aromatic flavour. A kind called mansamilbas, resembling a wheaten plumb, is very dangerous, as is likewise the sap of the boughs, which is perilous for the sight, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... of the Earth stooped over the floor of the cave, raised a huge stone from it, and left it leaning. It disclosed a great hole that went plumb-down. ...
— The Light Princess and Other Fairy Stories • George MacDonald
... extraordinary confrontation. On one side precision, foresight, geometry, prudence, a retreat assured, reserves prepared, an obstinate coolness, an imperturbable method, strategy profiting by the ground, tactics balancing battalions, carnage measured by a plumb-line, war regulated watch in hand, nothing left voluntarily to accident, old classic courage and absolute correctness. On the other side we have intuition, divination, military strangeness, superhuman instinct, a flashing glance; something that gazes like the eagle and strikes like lightning, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... of attraction to the whole solar system of our breakfast-table. The Little Gentleman leans towards her, and she again seems to be swayed as by some invisible gentle force towards him. That slight inclination of two persons with a strong affinity towards each other, throwing them a little out of plumb when they sit side by side, is a physical fact I have often noticed. Then there is a tendency in all the men's eyes to converge on her; and I do firmly believe, that, if all their chairs were examined, they would be found a little obliquely ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... 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 ...
— The Seiners • James B. (James Brendan) Connolly
... plumb humiliatin' to all of us thet we wasn't on hand to meet you," Stillwell said. "Me an' Al stepped into the P. O. an' said a few mild an' cheerful things. Them messages ought to hev been sent out to the ranch. I'm sure afraid it was a ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... suspected, how innocent must look the sun-bathed shore of Africa to the Christian skipper's diligently searching spy-glass. And there from his height, like the hawk they had dubbed him, poised in the cobalt heavens to plumb down upon his prey, he watched the great white ship and waited until she should come within ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... dirt flying out from a 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 ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Conquest of the Savages • Roger Thompson Finlay
... matters that it was pleasant to me to have the right to pay a woman's bills; I enjoyed seeing her garments lying about on my chairs. In time that exultation wore off. But I was not unhappy, I didn't expect much, I was always so sure that no woman could ever plumb ...
— Dear Brutus • J. M. Barrie
... different!" She nodded her lovely head in firm conviction. "It's heaps different and I'm goin' to know more about such things as clo'es. I ain't plumb poverty poor, like lots o' folks, here in th' mountings. I got land down in th' valley I get rent from—fifty dollars, every year! I'm goin' to find out about ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... to make him the proudest, best satisfied of men. I'll own I was mighty anxious to see you. I know the kind o' woman it would take to make David miserable, and it seems sometimes as if men——that is good men——are plumb, stone blind when it comes to pickin' a woman. They jest hitch up with everlastin' misery easy as dew rolling off a cabbage leaf. It's sech a blessed sight to see you, and hear your voice and know you're the woman anybody ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... innumerable waters. What is remarkable in the scenery is, that its sublimity is an inversion of the sublimity of almost all other grand scenery. It is not so much the heights that are prodigious as the abysses. At certain points in the course of the Colorado of the West you can drop a plumb line six thousand feet before it will reach the bosom of the current; and you can only gain the water level by turning backward for scores of miles and winding laboriously down some subsidiary canon, itself a chasm ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... so is her greaser husband. Down at the bunk-house it's the same way, with Slim, an' Flint Kreeger an' the rest. I tell yuh, I'm dead sick of being spied on, an' plotted against, an' never knowin' when yuh may get a knife in the back, or stop a bullet. I hate to leave Bud, but he's so plumb set on—" ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... ledge up and down the gulch and to estimate the probable extent of that pay streak. Then he gave it up in self-defense. "I've got to watch my dodgers," he admonished himself, "or I'll go plumb loco and imagine I'm a millionaire. I'll pan what I can get at and let it go at that. And I've got to count what gold shows up in the sack—and no more. Good Lord! I can't afford to make a fool of myself at this stage of the game! ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... door shut abruptly. Lena's too thin boots, out of plumb, suddenly slipped on a half-formed piece of ice. She made a desperate grab at the smooth surface of the window and then came ignominiously down—not wholly ignominiously, however, since her accident brought to her aid the man ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... many glow-worms. But let us see how he manages his atoms, 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 ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen
... beard, simply came along and married the little thing. She fluttered down on to his shoulders like a pigeon. She adored him, feared him, cooed to him, worried him, and knew that there were depths of his mind which she would never plumb. Woodruff, after being best man, went on loving, meekly and yet philosophically, and found his chief joy in just these suppers. The arrangement suited Vera; and as for the husband and the hopeless admirer, they had always been ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... result? Friedrich, in the intervals of an ague, with Herstal just broken out, may have wisely decided, No. "Our sublime little Uncle, of the waxy complexion, with the proudly staring fish-eyes,—no wit in him, not much sense, and a great deal of pride,—stands dreadfully erect, 'plumb and more,' with the Garter-leg advanced, when one goes to see him; and his remarks are not of an entertaining nature. Leave him standing there: to him let Truchsess and Bielfeld suffice, in these hurries, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... observations on minor portions of rock may be; for I never mark an angle unless enough of the upper or lower surface of the beds be smoothly exposed to admit of my pole being adjusted to it by the spirit-level. The pole then indicates the strike of the beds, and a quadrant with a plumb-line their dip; to all intents and purposes accurately. There is a curious distortion of the beds in the ravine between the Glacier des Bois and foot of the Montanvert, near the ice, about a thousand feet above the valley; the beds there seem to bend suddenly back under the ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... and fifteen inches thick. The dimensions on the ground were 12 x 22 feet outside. It had been of two or three stories, and exhibited considerable skill on the part of the builders, the corners being plumb and square. Under the brink of the cliff was a sort of gallery formed by the erosion of a soft shale between heavy sandstone beds, forming a floor and roof about eight or ten feet wide, separated by six or seven feet in vertical height. A wall had been carried along ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... he located the line across the floorjoists overhead, where rested the partition separating the dining-room from the parlour. Finding the middle of this line, he dropped an improvised plumb-line to the ground; and from this spot as centre, using a string about ten feet long, he described a circle on the earth. Then, referring to his calculations, he proceeded to locate several points with small stakes pressed into the soil. Then he ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... concluded the sheriff, as the applause of murmurs fell off. "And from yarns like that one you wouldn't never figure it that I was the son of a minister brung up plumb peaceful. ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... done seen him lots of times when he was just a lieutenant, down in the harbour of Port au Prince. If youse folks put up this proposition to Marse Jellicoe, he'll just tell the whole lot of you to go plumb to—" ...
— Further Foolishness • Stephen Leacock
... 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
... verticals or horizontals in built work, especially in tracery. A thing may be theoretically and intentionally at a certain angle, but actually at quite a different one. If level is important, take it yourself with spirit-level and plumb-line. ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... ye, Toby," said Bud, as he wrenched a huge mouthful from one of the "hanks" to test the quality. "But I'll tell ye what's a fact. When I come home tonight, after a meetin' of that there Committee of Safety I was tellin' you about, I found that I had plumb disremembered to fetch along the bacon, meal, an' taters that my wife done told me to bring, an' so I thought I would jest run over an' see if I couldn't borry some of you to last ...
— True To His Colors • Harry Castlemon
... his sail-broad vans He spread for flight, and, in the surging smoke Uplifted, spurns the ground; thence many a league, As in a cloudy chair, ascending rides Audacious; but, that seat soon failing, meets A vast vacuity. All unawares, Fluttering his pennons vain, plumb-down he drops Ten thousand fathom deep, and to this hour Down had been falling, had not, by ill chance, The strong rebuff of some tumultuous cloud, Instinct with fire and nitre, hurried him As many miles aloft. ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... were as many as the sea-gulls, and his palace like a marble hill. And he sat among the pillars of the hall, upon his throne of beaten gold, and around him stood the speaking statues which Daidalos had made by his skill. For Daidalos was the most cunning of all Athenians, and he first invented the plumb-line, and the auger, and glue, and many a tool with which wood is wrought. And he first set up masts in ships, and yards, and his son made sails for them: but Perdix his nephew excelled him; for he first invented the saw and its teeth, copying it from the back-bone ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... till, O, like the swirl of dust Around their marching legions, that dim cloud Of doubt closed round him. Was there any man So sure of heart and brain as to record The simple truth of things himself had seen? Then who could plumb that night? The work broke off! He knew that he was wrong. I knew it, too! Once more that stately structure of his dreams Melted like mist. His eagles perished like clouds. Death wound a thin horn through the centuries. The grave resumed his forlorn emperors. His empires crumbled back to ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... fusing fireballs scorch the sky, Their mining arts the staunch besiegers ply, Delve from the bank of York, and gallery far, Deep subterranean, to the mount of war; Beneath the ditch, thro rocks and fens they go, Scoop the dark chamber plumb beneath the foe; There lodge their tons of powder and retire, Mure the dread passage, wave the fatal fire, Send a swift messenger to warn the foe To seek his safety and the post forgo. A taunting answer comes; he dares defy To spring the mine and all its AEtnas try; When a black ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... to break into Len Yang; that's what I mean! Some day, on one of these reckless expeditions of yours, Peter, you're going to run plumb into a long, sharp knife! If I could head you ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... gusto, and according to the rules of perfection; but yet it is chance alone made it. Among so many pieces of marble there was one that formed itself of its own accord in this manner; the rains and winds have loosened it from the mountains; a violent storm has thrown it plumb upright on this pedestal, which had prepared itself to support it in this place. It is a perfect Apollo, like that of Belvedere; a Venus that equals that of the Medicis; an Hercules, like that of Farnese. You would ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... comin' too, an' no fatal error. No hurry about 'em, but a most alarmin' regularity. They was all pitchin' plumb on that road, an' each one about fifty to a hundred yards nearer our procession, an' us walkin' straight into the shower too. The swoosh-bang o' each one kep' gettin' louder an' louder, an' not a single one was missin' the road. I tell you, I could feel the ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... her no more, but only lay there mute and motionless; and from his look one might plumb the sorrows of his soul and know how shocked he was, and how grieved and heartstricken! Love's young dream was o'er! He had thought she loved him, but now he knew better. Their marriage had been a terrible mistake and he would give her back her freedom; he would give it ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... you were a physician," said Rosalie, "but there's one place I got you plumb wrong. I thought it was business troubles. So the trouble's your heart and affections! It's that big-eyed blonde niece of Markham's, of course. Well, you ain't the first. The best way to bring the young men like a flock of blackbirds is to shut ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin
... give a plumb out opinion—because it nearly always ruins your reputation as a prophet. But Bob ain't nobody's fool. And he's white from his heels to ...
— The Desert Fiddler • William H. Hamby |
