"Sawdust" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... thing!" he said, as he leant against the mantelpiece beside her. "The world's a poor place, and my doll's stuffed with sawdust. Did you ever know any doll ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... return to London in a condition fit to be looked at, after a summer spent on food such as we give to our horses? No doubt you will tell me they have plenty of milk,—buttermilk, I suppose, which I abhor. But do you think that I could live with pleasure on sawdust, just because I had milk to take ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... I cannot rhyme to, One Scherer, dry as sawdust, grim and prim. Of him there's much to say, if I had time to Concern myself in any wise with HIM. He seems to hate the heights he cannot climb to, He thinks your poetry a coxcomb's whim, A good ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... minute I was shown into the Editor's room, where again I was struck by the imaginative adequacy of the surroundings. Before coming to the man himself let me say something of these. The floor was not bare or even sprinkled with sawdust, as it might easily have been, but it was covered by a comfortable carpet, probably from Axminster. Comfort was indeed the note. The desk was neither pitch pine nor teak, but mahogany. Upon it were scattered papers—lightly scattered, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 1, 1919 • Various
... perspective of white marble tables, faces thrust forward over yellow plush cushions under twining veils of tobacco smoke, four German women on a little dais were playing Tannhauser. Smells of beer, sawdust, shrimps, roast pigeon. ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... recommended is to sprinkle a layer of sawdust on the bottom of a box, and then put in a layer of apples, not allowing them to tough each other. Upon this pack more sawdust; then another layer of apples, and so on until the box is filled. After packing, place up from the ground, in a cellar or storeroom, and they will keep perfectly, ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... to bractise running, so dot I gan catch you, eh?" grunted the German. "You vant me to eat breakfast sawdust for a dyspepsia vot I ain't got, huh? You vant me to dake breathing eggsercises ven I can dake more air into my lungs, alretty, dan your whole body gan disblace? You vant me to do monkey-tricks mit a dumb-pell, yen I gan ...
— The High School Captain of the Team - Dick & Co. Leading the Athletic Vanguard • H. Irving Hancock
... songs; and we and all good fellows may say that bad people have no Christmas, and though they copy the letter they know not the spirit; and I say that a copied Christmas is no Christmas at all, because Christmas is a feast of hearts and not of poor bits of cut-down trees stuck up in sawdust and covered with lights and tinsel, even if they are hung with the most expensive gewgaws and gimcracks that ever are bought for gifts by people who are expected to give, whether they like or not. But when the heart for Christmas is there and is beating, then a very little tree will ...
— The Little City Of Hope - A Christmas Story • F. Marion Crawford
... no more now, if you please, as I am sleepy, and I know you must be, too. But in case the little girl in Montclair doesn't drop her doll on the sidewalk, and spill the sawdust all over the stick of molasses candy I'll tell you next ...
— Curly and Floppy Twistytail - The Funny Piggie Boys • Howard R. Garis
... resembling on the outside a huge haystack. The size, however, is regulated according to the population of the immediate neighborhood. The seats are raised in a circle, one above another, about a central ring in which the contest takes place. The ground is covered with sawdust or tan. The birds are of a native game breed, and are subject from chickenhood to a peculiar course of treatment. The English game-cock is prized here only for crossing with the native breed. He cannot equal the Spanish bird in the necessary ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... after my relations. I never was away from home more than a day in my life till I was married, and it's been nothing but work ever since, and now to be laid here like a useless log, with everything going hotfoot to destruction! It's a good thing you've come at last, for the children are makin' sawdust and splinters of every bit of crockery in the house, and that Martha Spriggs has no more management than a settin' hen. I don't suppose you'll be much better, though. You never did hev much of a head, an' now you've been ...
— A Princess in Calico • Edith Ferguson Black
... grew so far accustomed to the fiendish sound that he could go about his hunting within half a mile of it, he found that the saws had worked him an unspeakable injury. They had fouled his beloved fishing-pools with sawdust. ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... thought his friend in the wrong, striking out with his fist and dragging Prince through the door and into a passing street car in time to avoid a rush of other waiters hurrying to the aid of the one who lay dazed and sputtering on the sawdust floor. ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... any fertilizing value in the hulls of almonds? Would pine sawdust from the lumber mills be a good substance to mix in and plow under in a three-acre adobe patch in order to loosen and lighten the soil ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... with a packing-case (bristling with splinters and nails). When it was open and the chisel broken I picked the splinters out of my fingers and contemplated the battered horn of a gramophone emerging from sawdust and shavings. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 23, 1919 • Various
... taut guy-ropes the travelers wound their way, emerging at length upon a gravelly beach where vast supplies of provisions were cached. All about, in various stages of construction, were skeletons of skiffs, of scows, and of barges; the ground was spread with a carpet of shavings and sawdust. ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... mighty length of arm and breadth of shoulders; a handsome, but thin and almost delicately fair, face, with blue eyes, and a surprisingly well-kept beard. The colour of this beard and of his hair—which he wore pretty long—was a light auburn. Just now the folds of his raiment were full of moist sawdust; and as he came he brought the scent of ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... terribly from the enormous taxation. I have seen it on my own estate in Poitou, and can make every allowance for them. In many cases the amounts they are adjudged to pay are absolutely greater than their whole income. They are forced to live upon bread made of bran and sawdust, to eat acorns and beechnuts; they are gaunt with hunger; they see their children dying before their eyes. They know not how their sufferings arise, they only know that they suffer, and in their despair they turn like hungry wolves against all who ...
— Won by the Sword - A Story of the Thirty Years' War • G.A. Henty
... that are more lasting. Sand in the soil permits of the more free passing of air through the soil. Basements and cellars are usually suited for storing bulbs until they have rooted, but they must not be warm enough to promote rapid growth. The pots when stored should be covered with leaves, sawdust, or coarse sand to prevent drying out. The soil must be kept moist, but not wet. Paper-white narcissus, if brought out of the dark after three or four weeks, will be in bloom at the end of another month if kept in the window ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... wire,—always, indeed, in June, when I walk in my orchard. June is the month of all months for the prudent orchardist to go thus armed, for the apple-tree borer is abroad in the land. When the quick eye of the master sees a little pile of sawdust at the base of a tree, he knows that it is time for him to sit right down by that tree and kill its enemy. The sharp knife enlarges the hole, which is the trail of the serpent, and the sharp-pointed, flexible wire follows the route until it has ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... he demanded, passionately. "Do you think it means anything to me that some fat old woman sees me making love to a sawdust actress at a matinee and then goes home and hates her fat old ...
— Harlequin and Columbine • Booth Tarkington
... the work-shop. There were a circular saw and a turning lathe, with the needful belts, and a small electric motor to furnish power. Also there were piles of lumber, shelves of paint pots and brushes, many shavings and much sawdust. And, standing beside a dilapidated chair from which he had evidently risen at the sound of the door bell, with a dripping paint brush in one hand and a wooden sailor in the other, there was a man. When he saw who his visitor ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... a lighted cabin, and was followed in by Shorty in answer to the "Come in" of the voice they heard groaning. It was a simple log cabin, the walls moss-chinked, the earth floor covered with sawdust and shavings. The light was a kerosene-lamp, and they could make out four bunks, three of which were occupied by men who ceased from groaning ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... into intricate parts of the building. The pipes which I used were of wrought-iron, similar to those used in conveying gas. They could be curved to suit any peculiarity of the situation; and when the pipes were lapped with felt, or enclosed in wooden troughs filled with sawdust, the loss of heat by radiation was reduced to a minimum. The loss of power was certainly much less than in the friction of a long and perhaps tortuous line of shafting. With steam of 50 lbs. to the inch, a pipe of one-inch bore will convey sufficient ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... must say it is right down good of you to get through all this way on the very first fine day. My word, what weather we've been having!" she exclaimed. "I was telling Astor only last night that if we had much more of that sort I'd have to keep him on sawdust puddings and pine-cone soup. That fetched a long face on to him, I can tell you; for it is downright fond of his food he is, ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... in silent acquiescence; the knot of men bowed quickly and stiffly; and Max found himself being led across the bare, sawdust-strewn floor into an inner and larger room—a holy of holies—where the light was dimmer and ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... not for the help given by the birds. Did you ever notice those borers at work, colonel? Some writer has well described them as animated gimlets. They just stick their pointed heads into the bark and turn their bodies around and around and out pours a little stream of sawdust. The birds would pick off such pests fast enough if people would only give them a chance and not scare them off ...
— Dickey Downy - The Autobiography of a Bird • Virginia Sharpe Patterson
... cost little more to make than a pair of good suspenders or garters. A little leather, a few pieces of elastic or web band, a cloth-covered pad with sawdust in it, is about ...
— Cluthe's Advice to the Ruptured • Chas. Cluthe & Sons
... body of his victim, where it lay both humped and sprawling, incredibly small and strangely meaner than in life. In these poor, miserly clothes, in that ungainly attitude, the dealer lay like so much sawdust. Markheim had feared to see it, and, lo! it was nothing. And yet, as he gazed, this bundle of old clothes and pool of blood began to find eloquent voices. There it must lie; there was none to work the cunning hinges or direct the miracle of locomotion—there it must lie till it was found. ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... "Congratulate him for me. I didn't know the little milksop had it in him. You ought to thank Sissy, ma'am, for proving that he is not really stuffed with sawdust. ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... to be done. We had to get him aft. A rope was tied slack under his armpits, and, reaching up at the risk of our lives, we hung him on the fore-sheet cleet. He emitted no sound; he looked as ridiculously lamentable as a doll that had lost half its sawdust, and we started on our perilous journey over the main deck, dragging along with care that pitiful, that limp, that hateful burden. He was not very heavy, but had he weighed a ton he could not have been more awkward to handle. We literally passed him from hand ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... himself, and spent the rest of the way in seeing her at it. They would drink pink lemonade, and there would be pop-corn balls—the entrancing smell of sawdust—the beat of the band. He hoped there would be a tom-tom, and some of the dark people ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... some hundred years later than that acute and accomplished granddaughter of Lady Mary; and Rashleigh pretty frequently, Rob himself now and then, may also savour to us a little of the boards and the sawdust. But, as a rule, Rob does not; and for nobody else, not even for the fortunate Frank,—who has nothing to do but to walk through his part creditably, and does it,—need any allowance be made. The Bailie is, with Shallow, his brother justice (upon whom ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... through a large hall, the floor of which was thickly sprinkled with sawdust; but, without pausing, Lord Claud mounted a staircase in the corner, and led Tom into a large upper room, the walls of which were adorned by rapiers with buttons at the end, where a man was sitting polishing the foils and humming a ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... up again he was just pale with rage. He says, 'I've shoveled acorns enough in there to keep the family thirty years, and if I can see a sign of one of 'em I wish I may land in a museum with a belly full of sawdust in two minutes!' ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... nervously, grew pale, and trembled like the strings of a violin, on which an artist had been playing some wild symphony, and inhaled the nasty smell of the sawdust, as if it had been the perfume of a bouquet of unknown flowers, and clenched her hands, and gazed eagerly at the two mountebanks, whom the public applauded rapturously at every feat. And contemptuously and haughtily she compared ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... other, "for I axed the very question when I was up the Dardanelles. There be a big black fellow, a unique they calls him, with a large sword and a bag of sawdust, as always stands sentry at the door, and if so be a woman kirks up a bobbery, why plump her head goes into ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... grew greater every day. "Do what you like—dine where you please—go and have ginger-beer and sawdust at Astley's, or psalm-singing with Lady Jane—only don't expect me to busy myself with the boy. I have your interests to attend to, as you can't attend to them yourself. I should like to know where you ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... blue and green; and in Lower Canada, St. Lawrence and the Ottawa are brown of various shades, a very slight alteration of the chemical components reflecting rays of colour as forcibly and perceptibly as, in like manner, a very slight change of component parts develops sugar and sawdust. Nature, in short, is very simple in all ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... gave orders for the dessert to be served, whereupon the slaves took away all the tables and brought in others, and sprinkled the floor with sawdust mixed with saffron and vermilion, and also with powdered mica, a thing I had never seen done before. When all this was done Trimalchio remarked, "I could rest content with this course, for you have your second tables, but, if you've something especially nice, why bring ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... flattering to Ingigerd. With an infinitely disdainful smile, she called the girl, who was chattering nonsense to a circle of flirtatious reporters and was overwhelmed with their tokens of approval, "a mechanical doll with a light head of porcelain filled with sawdust." ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... nights, when she came up to the attic cold and hungry, with a tempest raging in her young breast, Emily's stare seemed so vacant, her sawdust legs and arms so inexpressive, that Sara lost all control over herself. There was nobody but Emily—no one in the world. And there ...
— A Little Princess • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... all through, I have had the best of the comparison. Well, well, contagion is as often mental as physical; and I do not think my readers, who have all been under his lash, will blame me very much for giving the headsman a mouthful of his own sawdust. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... outer bark to the interior. It is generally conceded that the larvae are three years in reaching maturity. The young ones lie for the first year in the sapwood and the inner bark, excavating flat, shallow cavities, about the size of a silver dollar, which are filled with their sawdust-like castings. The holes by which they enter being small are soon filled up, though not until a few grains of castings have fallen from them. Their presence may, however, often be detected in young trees from the bark becoming dark colored, and sometimes dry ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 443, June 28, 1884 • Various
... containing only a long black table, some packing cases, and half a dozen rocking chairs. Of these, five were very new and one very old, black and heavy, with a green leather seat and a coat of arms worked on its back cushions. There were little heaps of mahogany sawdust here and there on the dirty tiled floor, and a pile of sacking in one corner. Beneath a window the flap of an open trap-door half hid a large green damp-stain; a deep recess in the wall yawned like a cavern, and had two or three tubs in the right ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... your breakfast foods you eat at break of day, Your crisp, delightful shavings and your stack of last year's hay, Your toasted flakes of rye and corn that fairly swim in cream, Or rave about a sawdust mash, an epicurean dream. But none of these appeals to me, though all of them I've tried— The breakfast that I liked the best was ...
— Just Folks • Edgar A. Guest
... strong man, determined and persistent; but two days more had passed, and many blisters covered his palms ere—after innumerable experiments with different kinds of woods and varying strokes—the first tiny glow fell into the carefully scraped sawdust. And it was with a fast-beating heart and tremulous breath that he blew his spark to a larger one, then laid on his shredded strips of bark and blew again, and so at last, with a great up-welling triumph in his soul, beheld the flicker of a ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... elderberries and bilberries,[27] are employed to impart a deep rich purple tint to red Port of a pale, faint colour; that gypsum is used to render cloudy white wines transparent;[28] that an additional astringency is imparted to immature red wines by means of oak-wood sawdust,[29] and the husks of filberts; and that a mixture of spoiled foreign and home-made wines is converted into the wretched compound frequently sold in this town by the ...
— A Treatise on Adulterations of Food, and Culinary Poisons • Fredrick Accum
... early in the morning, that is to say, when La Valliere and Madame were both absent. When, about two o'clock in the afternoon, the court returned to the Palais Royal, La Valliere went up into her own room. Everything was in its proper place—not the smallest particle of sawdust, not the smallest chip, was left to bear witness to the violation of her domicile. Saint-Aignan, however, wishing to do his utmost in forwarding the work, had torn his fingers and his shirt too, and had expended no ordinary amount of perspiration in the king's service. The palms ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... log into as fine white sections as a man ever saw—every piece as straight as morality, and without so much as a sliver to mar it. Nothing is so satisfactory as to have a task come out in perfect time and in good order. The little pieces of bark and sawdust I swept scrupulously into the fireplace, looking up from time to time to see how Harriet was taking it. ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... constructed such pleasing images with his serpentine form. But he did inform them that the monstrous reptile he possessed—one which, by the way, was only nine feet long—was always furnished in the cold weather with sawdust into which he could burrow, on account of the peculiarity always practised by creatures of its kind of swallowing its own blankets; and he did deliver an eulogy on his big black bear, and encourage the young ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... non-nitrogenous nutriment will be manifested. At first, the dog will take his food with avidity, and seem to thrive upon it; soon this desire for food will diminish, his body emaciate, his eye become ulcerated, and in a few weeks he will die; but mix bran or sawdust with the sugar or oil, and the health and vigor of the animal will be maintained for months. A similar phenomenon will be manifested, if grain only be given to a horse, without hay, straw, or material of like ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... pull to the newspaper that was spread under his works on the table, and sent all his chips and sawdust on ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... surpass them, she was of the same mind with regard to her husband and his family, herself and her family, her son and little granddaughter. She never saw any gowns and shawls which compared with hers in fineness and richness; she never tasted a morsel of cookery which was not as sawdust when she reflected upon her own; and all that humiliated her in the least, or caused her to feel in the least dissatisfied, was her son's wife ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... cages were covered with a thin layer of sawdust for the sake of cleanliness, and in one corner of each cage a nest box of some sort was placed. During the warm months I found it convenient and satisfactory to use berry boxes, such as appear in Figure 2, with a small entrance ...
— The Dancing Mouse - A Study in Animal Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes
... plank, but whether as a dwelling or a store-house, I could never find. When I used to lie in bed in the morning for a rest—we had no easy-chairs in Silverado—I would hear, hour after hour, the sharp cutting sound of his labours, and from time to time a dainty shower of sawdust would fall upon the blankets. There lives no more ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... is the author who, while making his characters suffer the most dreadful afflictions, lets them think and talk only commonplaces still, like the poor sawdust dolls that ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... Polish princesses, Dihannas, Sultannas, Cachuchas, and heaven knows what! There's the fat man, who comes in with the twenty-three dresses on, and turns out to be the living skeleton! There's the clowns, the sawdust, the white horse that dances a hornpipe, the candles stuck in hoops, just as in ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... stopper to it. Then wash the bottle thoroughly and dry it, finally polishing the inside with a piece of soft cloth or tissue paper. Place one ounce of cyanide of potassium into the bottle and pour in enough dry sawdust to cover the lumps of poison. Then wet some plaster of paris until it is the consistency of thick cream and quickly pour it over the sawdust, taking care that it does not run down the sides or splash against the bottle. Place the bottle on a level table and very soon the plaster of paris will set ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... and looked out of the window; below, in the race, there was a jam of logs, and the air was keen with the pungent smell of sawdust and new boards. The whir and thud of the machinery down-stairs sent a faint quiver through the planks under his feet. "The mill will net a good profit this year," he said to himself, absently. "'Thalia can have pretty nearly anything she wants." And even as he said it he had a sudden, ...
— The Way to Peace • Margaret Deland
... and dressing-room, The bedstead was of four posts and a lath bottom, on which was laid a truss of clean, dry straw, serving as a palliasse, with bed and bedding. The front was fitted up with counters and shelves. The stubble was well trodden into the ground; over which were laid sawdust and boards behind and before the counters, to secure the feet from damp. The shutters, of the space allowed for the windows, were fixed with hinges, and when let down, rested upon brackets, serving as showboards for goods. The booths were constructed of new boards, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 333 - Vol. 12, Issue 333, September 27, 1828 • Various
... good word, Leigh. You happened on what I managed you should, else that long circus performance with Mademoiselle Rosella Gimpkello, famous bareback rider, had not been put on the sawdust this hot day." ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... the iron-bound chair, doubling it up like crumpled paper, hurling me headlong, not to the floor of the cage, but straight through the sliding-bars which Speed had just flung open with a shout. As for me, I landed violently on my back in the sawdust, the breath knocked ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... given. At this the young braves would leap into the woods, to see which one first could bring back fire. Each had his own secret way of making it. Usually a bowstring was twisted about a fire stick, and the stick was turned rapidly in a groove. In a few seconds, smoke would rise from the sawdust that formed. After a little fanning a flame would ...
— Stories the Iroquois Tell Their Children • Mabel Powers
... away to the river if we had half an hour to spare. The "drivers," so brave and skilled, so graceful, held us in breathless admiration as they leaped from one rolling log to another, or walked the narrow wooden bridges above the deep and silently sweeping waters. The piles of slabs, the mounds of sawdust, the intermittent, ferocious snarl of the saws, the slap of falling lumber, the never ending fires eating up the refuse—all these sights and sounds made a return to school difficult. Even the life around the threshing machine seemed a ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... any standin' went. Dey cooked up whole trunks full o' good things t'eat an' driv' over to de camp groun's. De preacher had a big pavilion covered wid sweet-gum branches an' carpeted wid sawdust. Folks had wagons wid hay an' quilts whar de men-folks slep'. De ladies slep' in little log houses an' dey took dey feather beds wid' em. I always driv' de carriage for my white folks. Whilst dey ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Mississippi Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... am asleep I dream of my old home. I forget the crowds who stare at me, and the smell of the sawdust, and the narrow, narrow cage. I think I am once again in ...
— Friends and Helpers • Sarah J. Eddy
... the same purpose, is made by mixing fine sifted oak sawdust with linseed oil which has been ...
— Ordnance Instructions for the United States Navy. - 1866. Fourth edition. • Bureau of Ordnance, USN
... reminiscent misery how the lad turned suddenly in his walk and entered the door of a drinking-room that stood open. It was very comfortable within. The screens kept out the chill of the autumn night, the sawdust-sprinkled floor was clean, the tables placed near together, the bar glittering, the attendants white-aproned ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie
... rising fifteen feet from the ground. They are grooved, and spring from a wide platform, approached by a flight of steps. At the base, rests a spring-plank or bascule, to which leather thongs are attached to buckle down the victim, and a basket or pannier filled with sawdust to receive the severed head. Between these, at their summit, hangs the shining knife in its appointed grooves, and a cord, which may be disconnected by a jerk, holds it to its position. Two men will be required to work the instrument promptly,—the one to bind the condemned, ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... bright as a silver dollar. In the book we can smell the sawdust, hear the flapping of the big white canvas and the roaring of the lions, and listen to the merry "hoop la!" of ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Florida - Or, Wintering in the Sunny South • Laura Lee Hope
... the same spot, which had witnessed their father's meditations the day before. They were seated on a rude bench in an angle of the wall, flanked by a low, heavy bastion. And from the parapet their gaze might have wandered over a goodly sight, for on a broad space, covered with sand and sawdust, within the vast limits of the castle range, the numerous knights and youths who sought apprenticeship in arms and gallantry under the earl were engaged in those martial sports which, falling elsewhere ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Stroke make of this? He expressed no opinion, but oh, his face was grim. Orders were immediately given to double the sentinels. A barrel was placed in the Queen's Bower. Sawdust was introduced at immense risk into the Lair. A paper containing this writing, "248xho317 Oxh4591AWS314dd5," was passed round and then solemnly burned. Nothing was left ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... table, takes the revolver out of drawer and crouches down in the corner, left, behind the cupboard. A moment later the door is flung open and MAT BURKE appears in the doorway. He is in bad shape—his clothes torn and dirty, covered with sawdust as if he had been grovelling or sleeping on barroom floors. There is a red bruise on his forehead over one of his eyes, another over one cheekbone, his knuckles are skinned and raw—plain evidence of the fighting he has been through on his "bat." His eyes ...
— Anna Christie • Eugene O'Neill
... the crowd: "The panic is in full swing. She's a cellar-to-ridge-pole ripper. They're down 40 or over on an average. Anti-People's is down to 35, and still coming like sawdust over a broken dam. Barry Conant's house and a dozen other of Reinhart's have gone under. His banks and trust companies are going every minute. The whole Street will be overboard before the close. The governing committee has just called a meeting ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson
... basement and I found myself in an eating-house somewhat better than those I had seen in passing; but that did not mean much for its excellence. The place was smoky, the tables were covered with oilcloth, the floor with sawdust, and from the kitchen came a rancid odor of fish fried over several times, which almost nauseated me. I asked my companion if this was the place where we were to eat. He informed me that it was the best place in town where a colored man could get a meal. I then wanted to know why somebody ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... climbing roof above roof, along the steep bottom of dells, and communicating by covered bridges over the larger of the torrents. The hum of watermills, the splash of running water, the clean odour of pine sawdust, the sound and smell of the pleasant wind among the innumerable army of the mountain pines, the dropping fire of huntsmen, the dull stroke of the wood-axe, intolerable roads, fresh trout for supper in the clean bare chamber of an inn, and the song of birds and the music of the village-bells—these ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... M. Radisson, "an I spill not some sawdust out o' these dolls, or cut their stay-strings, may the gutter take us for good and all! Pardieu! An your wig's the latest fashion, the wits ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... been very dirty after a drunkards' raid, and when it did not finish till one o'clock, how did you get ready for Sunday's meetings?' The sweet spirited old man smiled and replied, 'The hall did get dirty, and it did take some time to sweep up the sawdust and make things fresh for knee-drill, but I just went on till it was finished. Yes, I got tired. But no, I never grudged the work, thank God. I was glad to help the Adjutant, bless her! in my ...
— The Angel Adjutant of "Twice Born Men" • Minnie L. Carpenter
... and heavily through the streets without seeing the people. In Wabash Avenue near Twenty-third Street he stopped in a saloon and drank beer. The saloon was in a room below the level of the sidewalk and the floor was covered with sawdust. Two half drunken labourers stood by the bar quarrelling. One of the labourers who was a socialist continually cursed the army and his words started McGregor to thinking of the dream he had so long ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... it was your doll and not mine, that fell in," went on Rose, "'cause my doll's a sawdust one—this one is. But I have a rubber doll up at the house, ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Grandma Bell's • Laura Lee Hope
... semblance of Max Muller; while the other, alternately denouncing the wickedness and deriding the toothlessness of a grim Giant Pope, may be likened, at a distance, to John Bunyan. About the whole—to conclude—is an atmosphere, not too pronounced, of the Newgate Calendar, and a few patches of sawdust from the Prize Ring. May not people well have wondered (the good pious English folk to whom Luck is a scandal, as the Bible Society's secretary wrote to Borrow),—what manner of man is this, this muleteer-missionary, this natural man with a pen in the hand of a prize-fighter, ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... he been driven to ink and paper, would have been sonnets to the cities. He studied cities as women study their reflections in mirrors; as children study the glue and sawdust of a dislocated doll; as the men who write about wild animals study the cages in the zoo. A city to Raggles was not merely a pile of bricks and mortar, peopled by a certain number of inhabitants; it was a thing with a soul characteristic and distinct; ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... that one of us has got to get this accursed thing, and if I can prevent it, it shan't be Bovey!" What a strange scene it was beneath, around, above and opposite them! Beneath flowed the river, solid with sawdust, the yellow accumulation of which sent up a strong resinous smell that almost made them giddy; to the left the tumultuous foam of the Chaudiere cast a delicate veil of spray over the sharp outlines of the ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... connection with it. With a purpose so strict, and a theory of religion so precise, there is usually little play for imagination or feeling. Though we read Protestant theology as a duty, we find it as dry in the mouth as sawdust. The literature which would please must represent nature, and nature refuses to be bound into our dogmatic systems. No object can be pictured truly, except by a mind which has sympathy with it. Shakespeare no more hates Iago than Iago ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude
... only wishing I could come here and be 'bossed' by you until I could hold my own against any weather. You make me feel just as I used to do when I went to a circus and watched the athletes, men and women, file past me in the sawdust. They seemed like demigods. As I sit here now I have a fierce desire to be as well, as strong, as full of life as you are. I hate being thin and timid. You have the physical perfection that queens ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... York City, wrote to that somewhat mythical concern proposing to become their agent for the circulation of the "queer." Even after receiving the first installment of their wares, the honorable gentleman did not comprehend that the firm dealt exclusively in sawdust, not in currency. He wrote again, complaining that, after a journey of sixty miles over a rough road to the nearest reliable express office, he found nothing but a worthless package, marked "C. O. D.," ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... fish-market, and then to cramp the roving fishes in a narrow dish. It causes a great nausea in the stomach, if even the slave touches the cup with greasy hands, while he licks up snacks, or if offensive grime has adhered to the ancient goblet. In trays, in mats, in sawdust, [that are so] cheap, what great expense can there be? But, if they are neglected, it is a heinous shame. What, should you sweep Mosaic pavements with a dirty broom made of palm, and throw Tyrian ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... duly said it at length. It was a state of things highly pleasing to the mob. For they said one to another: Look, here is a man who writes beautifully, evidently a Great Writer; and there is nothing inside him but sawdust, just like you and me. For the most part good writing in the nineteenth century was self-conscious writing, which cannot be beautiful. Is a woman gazing into her ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... her hand on a heavy, cylindrical substance like a piece of iron gas-pipe, only—funny, but it was packed in something like sawdust. ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... and went to the circus, our favorite performer in the sawdust ring was always the clown, and our favorite clown was the fat one. In fact, we do not remember ever having seen a clown who was not a ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... the ladder to the bottom of the dam, and fixing the fuse to the cap, ran it into the hole he had bored till it was well among the sawdust and sticks of dynamite. He cut the fuse to two minutes' length, and carried the box back among the big key logs that held the dam. He was soon ready. He jammed the box under water among beams where it would stick. A match started the fuse ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... its eggs in the bark of the apple-tree near the ground. The larvae when hatched bore their way into the wood, and will soon destroy a small tree. They cannot do their mischief, however, without giving evidence of their presence. Sawdust exudes from the holes by which they entered, and there should be sufficient watchfulness to discover them before they have done much harm. I prefer to cut them out with a sharp, pointed knife, and make sure that they are dead; but a wire thrust into the ...
— The Home Acre • E. P. Roe
... man, rather than save his neck by an act of baseness. But his temper was very different when he woke the next morning, when the courage which he had drawn from wine and company had evaporated, when he was alone with the iron grates and stone walls, and when the thought of the block, the axe and the sawdust rose in his mind. During some time he regularly wrote a confession every forenoon when he was sober, and burned it every night when he was merry. [14] His nonjuring friends formed a plan for bringing ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of tinder on a dry leaf and arrange it where the powdered sawdust will fall on it. When the powder becomes sufficiently hot there will be sparks and these, falling into the tinder, can be fanned into a flame by waving your hand over it. You will not see the spark but when smoke ...
— On the Trail - An Outdoor Book for Girls • Lina Beard and Adelia Belle Beard
... hadn't a saw him fall he would 'a' laid thar yit!"—and go straight home and pretend to be proud of a snug little poodle of a man who doesn't play for fear of soiling his picture-clothes, and who says: "Yes, sir, thank you," and "No, thank you, ma'am," like a French doll before it has had the sawdust ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison
... rather a serious affair. He loaded the launch with a thousand pounds—all she could carry—and started home immediately after sundown; but even then he lost from a hundred to a hundred and fifty pounds before he had the stuff cached in McClintock's bamboo-covered sawdust pit. This ice was used for refrigerator purposes ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... mill stretched beside him in all the pathos of its premature decay. The ribs of the water-wheel appeared amid a tangle of shrubs and driftwood, and were twined with long grasses and straggling vines; mounds of sawdust and heaps of "brush" had taken upon themselves a velvety moss where the trickling slime of the vanished river lost itself in sluggish pools, discolored with the dyes of redwood. But on the other side of the rocky ledge dropped the whole length of the valley, alternately bathed in sunshine ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte
... definitely that he would never relinquish this bright and lovely possession again. It was the first beautiful thing he had ever possessed. He was the darling of fond and indulgent parents and his nursery was crowded with hideous rag and sawdust dolls, golliwogs, comic penguins, comic lions, comic elephants and comic policemen and every variety of suchlike humorous idiocy and visual beastliness. This figure, solid, delicate and gracious, was a thing of a ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... with three crosses and a dash. Sowse selects whatever bears two crescents and a star. Rowse pokes about for his stock, inscribed clip, dash, star, dash, clip. Nobody has counterfeited these hieroglyphs. The tale is complete. The logs go to the saw-mill. Sawdust floats seaward. The lumbermen junket. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... interludes of tacit humour and excellent narrative, is the last extravagance of irrelevant grief.... Genuine sentiment was as strange to Sterne the writer as to Sterne the man; and he conjures up no tragic figure that is not stuffed with sawdust and tricked out in the rags of the green-room. Fortunately, there is scant opportunity for idle tears in Tristram Shandy.... Yet no occasion is lost.... Yorick's death is false alike to nature and art. The vapid emotion is properly matched with commonness of expression, and the bad taste is ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... I had in Leipsic. It's a queer little sawdust affair, but I love it to pieces. It always reminds me of my mother. Do you know what I am playing?" but Von ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... of many, women fail in nothing, but base man fails in appreciating women in art as in everything else where appreciation of talent is due. The fashion-plate young lady, with her doll's face, her empty head, and her sawdust constitution, monopolises all the attention that selfish man can afford to give outside thoughts about ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... many other things of the workmen. Some of the very stiff calfskins, he discovered, were "dusted" or laid in bins of damp sawdust and softened before they were taken to the finishers. There were a multitude of processes, he found, for converting the leather into the special kinds desired. What a numberless variety of finishes there was! There was willow ...
— The Story of Leather • Sara Ware Bassett
... the barn was covered with sawdust, and all around the sides of the barn were cages containing many animals. There were lions, tigers, wolves, leopards, monkeys, snakes, and many other strange beasts, some of which Tum Tum had seen in his jungle home, and some of which ...
— Tum Tum, the Jolly Elephant - His Many Adventures • Richard Barnum
... exclaimed he, "the heads of the slaves and executioner who inflicted the punishment." In a minute the Kislar Aga appeared; he perceived how matters stood, and trembled for his own. He held up the three heads, one after another, and then returned them to the sack of sawdust in which ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... I would cut some dash if I had money! I'd build me a house of lumber clear through, and I'd paint it all over, paint it blue! And I'd have sawdust on the settin'-room floor and a brass spittoon in every corner! 'Have a chair,' I'd say to stoppers, not lettin' on I was puffed up at all. 'Have a ten-cent seegar. Don't mention it! Don't mention it! I get a case ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... how nicely I washed up my doll's room—her corner, you know,—that day when I spilt all her soup in trying to feed her, and then, while trying to wipe it up, I accidentally burst her, and all her inside came out—the sawdust, I mean. It was the worst mess I ever made, but I cleaned it up as well as Jessie herself could have ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... lasted for nearly three weeks, and the Dandy, being the under-man in the pit, had anything but a merry time. Down in the pit, away from the air, he worked; pulling and pushing, pushing and pulling, hour after hour, in a blinding stream of sawdust. ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... favorite plan to make bends without cutting them. Fig. 46. It is done by taking a length of pipe, and, just where you require the bend, lay it (with the seam at the side) upon a pillow, made by tightly filling a sack with sand, wood shavings, or sawdust; have some shavings ready to hand and a good lath, also a short length of mandrel about 3 ft. long and about 1/2 in. smaller than the pipe, and a dummy as shown at A B, Fig. 56. Now, all being ready, put a few burning shavings into the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 315, January 14, 1882 • Various
... understand the feeling. Later on I lied through habit; later still because, after all, the classics were all that I had and so I valued them. I have seen thus a deceived dog value a pup with a broken leg, and a pauper child nurse a dead doll with the sawdust out of it. So I nursed my dead Homer and my broken Demosthenes though I knew in my heart that there was more sawdust in the stomach of one modern author than in the whole lot of them. Observe, I am not saying which it is that has ...
— Behind the Beyond - and Other Contributions to Human Knowledge • Stephen Leacock
... after-supper-overtime work, was the preparation for Potlatch Day, the festival that meant to the BSG what April Fifteenth means to the Internal Revenue Service. Cases of fireworks piled up in the brick warehouse next door to Headquarters. Sawdust-packed thermite grenades were stacked right up to the perforated pipes of the sprinkler system. No Smoking sign blossomed a hundred yards on every side. The blacklists, naming consumers who'd withheld dated gifts ...
— The Great Potlatch Riots • Allen Kim Lang
... as I underwent last night at my sister Bee's success as a premiere danseuse. Shall I ever forget it? Shall danger, or sickness, or poverty, or disaster ever blot from my mind that scene? Jimmie, never again can she scorn us for our sawdust-ring proclivities, for do you know, I shouldn't be surprised to see her end ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... cold water, splendid gymnasiums, forty or fifty feet long by thirty wide, with pillars painted sky blue, and supporting a magnificent ceiling. Swings, dumb-bells, Indian clubs and instruments for raising weights were strewn all over the sawdust floors. We passed by six court-yards adorned with statues, flowers, fountains and ponds full of gold fish. I noticed in front of the church entrance a large and splendid representation of the grotto of Lourdes made by one of the Jesuit Fathers. Two noble palm-trees which grew near ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various
... the marsh. "They ain't quite so bad when they get big enough to trill, but that everlasting yipping makes me lonesome. I'm a good mind to toss up this tenpenny nail and salt codfish business and get back to the sawdust once more." ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... cruelty, made the signal of mercy: but as the attendants of the arena approached, they found the kindness came too late; the heart of the Gaul had been pierced, and his eyes were set in death. It was his life's blood that flowed so darkly over the sand and sawdust of the arena. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... an' elephants. Weal animals. Dolls, you know"—she smiled as she confided the great secret—"aren't weal babies, they're just full of sawdust." ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... in good part and made to contribute to the jollity of the season. At the breakfast-table lumps of cracked marble serve admirably for loaf-sugar, except that the hottest coffee will not dissolve them, and boiled eggs tempt the appetite only to disappoint with their sawdust filling. Then all assemble on the piazza to witness the merriment of the crowd of negroes who have assembled to claim little gifts of tobacco and sugar and to receive the annual glass of whisky which a time-honored custom bestows. The liquor is served in a wine-glass, and swallowed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... narrow boards along each side of the row; bringing them together at the top in the form of a triangle, and afterwards drawing earth over them to keep them steady. Some cover the dwarfish sorts with half-decayed leaves, dry tanner's bark, sand, coal-ashes, and even sawdust; but all of these methods are inferior to the ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr
... we've been looking over the bulletins and as near as we can estimate, it ought not to cost more than $500 for a dairy house alone, but when we build the new dairy house, I think we should abandon this old wooden ice house that keeps the yard all mussed up with sawdust— besides, you have to cut from thirty to fifty per cent, more ice than we really use in order to provide for the great waste in such a poorly built house. Now, if we build our ice house in connection ...
— Hidden Treasure • John Thomas Simpson
... Turner, following him, also called out, 'This is all Oliver and the Government; the Lord have mercy on my soul.' They hung from the gallows for half-an-hour. On the platform, in front of the gallows, was placed the block and two sacks of sawdust, and on a bench two axes, two sharp knives, and a basket. The block was a long piece of timber supported at each end by pieces a foot high, and having a small batten nailed across the upper end for the neck to rest upon. The body ...
— Bygone Punishments • William Andrews
... solidly-built one, originally intended for a gentleman's residence, but fallen now on evil days. An odour of fried onions and sawdust pervaded the establishment, for Madame Combrisson boarded three or four of her lodgers, regaling them principally on "soupe a l'ognon," and Combrisson carried on in the back kitchen his carpentry business at which he kept these same lodgers employed, paying them in kind with food and house-room, ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... wish makes the rich as poor, in his gilded, brightly painted palace, in the midst of his heaps of grain, of perfumes and precious things, as the most wretched workman of the Memnonia, who sops up with sawdust the blood of the bodies, or the semi-nude negro driving on the Nile his frail papyrus-boat under the ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... R. "What do you think I 've been doing? I 've been fishing out of the saw-mill window just to kill time. There was a patch of floating sawdust there,—kind of unlikely place for trout, anyway,—but I thought I'd put on a worm and let him crawl around a little." He opened his creel as he spoke. "But I did n't look for a pair of 'em," he added. And there, on top of ...
— Fishing with a Worm • Bliss Perry
... also heat-proof. The main point is to have a sufficient thickness of concrete, and the iron joists and cross girders well buried therein. Ordinary floors may be rendered heat-proof by partially filling the space between ceiling and floorboards with sawdust or sheets of slag-wool laid on boarding nailed to fillets on the joists. The sawdust should be filled up to the top of the joists; over this a layer of thick felt, and the boarding above. This, however, is only a makeshift when compared with a solid ...
— The Turkish Bath - Its Design and Construction • Robert Owen Allsop
... Donald McKay, son of Hector McKay, millionaire lumber king, falls in love with "Nan of the Sawdust Pile," a charming girl who has been ostracized ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey
... Will anybody tell me why the devil he must be poking into the French camp? They were ready enough to run to him and beg potatoes. It 's all for humanity he does it-mark that. Never was a word fitter for a quack's mouth than "humanity." Two syllables more, and the parsons would be riding it to sawdust. Humanity! Humanitomtity! It's the best word of the two for half the things done ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... dawned bright and fair and there was great commotion throughout the circus, getting ready for the eleven o'clock procession that was to march through the streets. Early in the morning, Billy was led into the sawdust ring, and a peculiar saddle like a little platform was strapped to his back. This the monkey was to dance on, dressed as a ballet girl, with yellow, spangled skirts, a satin bodice and a blue cap with a feather in it on ...
— Billy Whiskers - The Autobiography of a Goat • Frances Trego Montgomery
... quickly. "I know you better than that, my dear Henry. There is nothing here or in this atmosphere which could possibly attract you for long. There is no work for you to do—work, the very breath of your body; work, the one thing you live for and were made for; work, you man of sawdust and red tape." ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim |
