"Sledge" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... every member of the families at this time. The threshing floor on which the operation is conducted is twenty yards across, circular and laid with flat stones. About sufficient sheaves to form half a dozen of our "stooks" at home is evenly spread on the floor, while a pair of oxen draw a sledge made of two stout boards, about 5 feet long, turned up at the point, and studded most carefully with flints projecting fully half an inch. The driver, who is usually a woman, stands on this and directs the cattle round ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... tax (mentioned in "Egil's Saga") is here ascribed to FRODE, who makes the Finns pay him, every three years, a car full or sledge full of skins for every ten heads; and extorts one skin per head from the Perms. It is Frode, too (though Saxo has carved a number of Frodes out of one or two kings of gigantic personality), that ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... road. His uncle found it convenient to put him to work. He can never be faithfully said to have learned to walk; and recalls, as the first incident of his life, a man who carried a baby and two bowie knives, teaching him to play old sledge on the cushions ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... controversy. Then he pulls from his pocket a short 'bull-dog' with a horn tip, whose massive, square-jawed bowl and ferocious short-curved stem breathe forth aggressiveness, and, jamming it full of 'plug cut,' he writes one of those satirical, sledge-hammer roasts which make him feared by ...
— Said the Observer • Louis J. Stellman
... hitherto so patient, for the first time determined to use force against them.... The scene here altogether appears to have been terrific in the extreme. The violence and ferocity of the ruffians, armed with sledge-hammers and other instruments of destruction, who burst into the houses—the savage shouts of the surrounding multitude—the wholesale desolation—the row of bonfires blazing in the street, heaped with the contents of the sacked mansion, with splendid furniture, books, pictures, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... milk of human kindness. In a voice, strong as his right arm and clear as his conscience, he poured forth a petition to Heaven, so loud, so powerful, so full of Christian force, that the blacksmith began to tremble on his knees, the two hands that had been clenched like sledge-hammers clasped themselves, till the palms met and were uplifted to Heaven as a child ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... hour drew near the doctor's heart was beating like a sledge hammer. Bivens's programme had been carried out to the letter. Stocks had declined for the first hour a point, and in the second hour suddenly smashed down two more points amid the wildest excitement ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... the thundering noise of a score of sledge hammers at the principal entrance and the side doors. Mr. Cartwright and one of his workmen ran to the bell rope, and in a moment its iron tongue was clanging out its summons for assistance to the country ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... day (Varia had been somehow peculiarly enchanting the previous evening), I dressed myself in my best, slowly and solemnly sallied out from my room, took a first-rate sledge, and drove down to Ivan Semyonitch's. Varia was sitting alone in the drawing-room reading Karamzin. On seeing me she softly laid the book down on her knees, and with agitated curiosity looked into my face; I had never been to see them ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... through his swollen mouth at the anguish of it and dropped the rock. Pardee, hovering near, seeing all, picked it up and slipped it into his pocket as Mormon pinned down Russell's arm with his left knee and swung left and right in sledge-hammer blows to the jaw of the face that tried in vain to dodge the knockout. As if a galvanic current that had simulated life had suddenly been shut off, Roaring Russell's body lost all energy, it seemed to ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... forgot for two hours that he had hands and feet, and that they were beyond his control. It was a tremendous success; we were so enthusiastic by the time things broke up that we told the cabmen to go hang and all walked home to the Hall, the men fighting for a chance to pull on the sledge-rope ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... was able to make ample provision for his daughter who had hitherto shown herself somewhat difficult in this business of matrimony and now was bordering on her twenty-seventh year. Everybody was delighted, everything went smoothly as a sledge sliding down a slope of frozen snow and the mists of time hid whatever might be at the end of that slope. Probably a plain; at the worst the ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... carrying them forward, the buffer-springs would be driven home and, at the same time, by a simple arrangement of the mechanism, the brakes would be called into simultaneous action; thus the wheels would be brought into a state of sledge, and the train speedily stopped. This plan was adopted by Mr. Stephenson before he left the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, though it was afterwards discontinued; but it is a remarkable fact, that this identical plan, with the addition of a centrifugal apparatus, has quite recently been revived ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... apology for a waggon track ended altogether, and thenceforth the settlers found the route difficult and dangerous to a degree far exceeding their previous experiences or their wildest conceptions. Jerry Goldboy had now "facts" enough to overturn all his unbelief. The axe, crowbar, pick, and sledge-hammer were incessantly at work. They had literally to hew their path through jungles and gullies, and beds of torrents and rocky acclivities, which formed a series of obstructions that tested the power of the whole party,—Groot Willem and the ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... She was cool, cool as Drummond, although she knew her heart was thumping like a sledge-hammer. There was Kitty Carr, in a revulsion of feeling, her hands pressed tightly to her head again, as if it were bursting. She was swaying as ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve
... his journey, striving to concentrate his mind on other things. Seven or eight miles to the south and west was the cabin of Jacques Pierrot, a half-breed, who had a sledge and dogs. He would hire Jacques to accompany him on his patrol in place of Bucky Nome. Then he would return to Nelson House and send in his report of Bucky Nome's desertion, since he knew well enough after the final remarks of that gentleman ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood
... "It is sledge-hammer tactics, so dear to the Prussians, that the Austrian commanders have adopted, and from the general aspect of their plans, it would appear that these were prepared and matured in ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... long excursions along the coast, as far north as Icy Cape, if not further; and southward, along the shores of Kotzebue Sound. Similarly for many winters, wearied with confinement to the house during the long night, he was wont to set out, accompanied by some native guide and wife with dog-team and sledge, to make trips of several hundred miles over ice and snow, exposed to blizzards such as we have no conception of, camping out when weary in an improvised snow-house, or sleeping, perhaps, in some native settlement, where the ...
— Short Sketches from Oldest America • John Driggs
... men, standing perfectly at ease on his narrow ledge, swung a heavy sledge-hammer, while the other held in place the bolt to be driven home ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... Clayton, European powers would never have consented to such exclusive control. "Well, Sir," said Douglas, "I do not know that they would have consented: but of one thing I am certain I would never have asked their consent."[403] And such was the temper of Young America that this sledge hammer ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... become more or less plastered with snow, so that even their dark trunks flashed mysteriously into and out of view. In the entire world of the great white silence the only solid, enduring, palpable reality was the tiny sledge train crawling with infinite patience across ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... evenly, there is for some time the most delightful road that can be imagined. No jolts, no shaking, but a smooth, gliding motion, like that of a boat in calm water, and the horses gallop along as if totally unconscious of the sledge behind them. Unfortunately, this happy state of things does not last all through the winter. The road soon gets cut up, and deep transverse furrows (ukhaby) are formed. How these furrows come into existence I have never been able clearly to comprehend, though I have often heard ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... Laudabat quippe ferientes, hortabaturque ut auderent." When one of our theatres let down an iron curtain upon the stage as a means of insulating the audience from any fire amongst the scenery, and sent men to prove the strength of this curtain by playing upon it with sledge-hammers in the sight and hearing of the public, who would not have laughed at the hollowness of the mummery, if the blows had been gentle, considerate, and forbearing? A "make-believe" blow would have implied a "make- believe" hammer and a "make-believe" curtain. No!—hammer away, ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... combined, the face for striking, and the "peen" which may be a claw, pick, wedge, shovel, chisel, awl or round head for other uses. There are altogether about fifty styles of hammers varying in size from a jeweler's hammer to a blacksmith's great straight-handled sledge-hammer, weighing twenty pounds or more. They are named mostly according to their uses; as, the riveting-hammer, Fig. 159, the upholsterer's hammer, Fig. 160, the veneering-hammer, Fig. 162, etc. Magnetized hammers, Fig. 161, are used in many trades for driving brads and tacks, ...
— Handwork in Wood • William Noyes
... promised. While the sledges were preparing, I requested the princess to obtain several flasks of the golden water, that I might present them as curiosities to all the learned societies in Europe. This she accomplished, and stowing them in her own sledge with several articles of wearing apparel, not only took them from the palace unperceived, but they were carried on board without the knowledge of my companions. I immediately cut my cables, and made all sail out of the bay without any molestation, as the natives ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... beech-tree, Jean Jacques saw his wife footing it back to her house with a light, wayward step; when he watched the master-carpenter vault over a stone fence five feet high with a smile of triumph mingled with doubt on his face, he was too stunned at first to move or speak. If a sledge-hammer strikes you on the skull, though your skull is of such a hardness that it does not break, still the shock numbs activity for awhile, at any rate. The sledge-hammer had descended on Jean Jacques' head, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... picturesque, but more melancholy, as they went further East; the somber Carpathians rose from the snow-covered plains and villages, surrounded by white glistening walls, and stunted willows stood by the side of the roads, ravens sailed through the white sky, and here and there a small peasant's sledge shot by, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... out of nothingness and smashed into his body. His chest was compressed, his face was flattened, he could not get enough air to breathe. The heavy sledge of acceleration crushed him back into the padded chair, inexorable, implacable, relentless, heavy. His vision clouded in red and he thought he would die. Instead, he spoke into the lip ...
— Sound of Terror • Don Berry
... "My sledge and hammer lie reclin'd; My bellows, too, have lost their wind; My fire's extinct, my forge decay'd, And in the dust my vice is laid; My coal is spent, my iron gone, The nails are driven, my ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes
... the waxed oak floor. The northern early winter was come, snow already blocking up from time to time the seignorial mansion, then melting under the breath of a warmer wind, till the great winter blockade finally set in. One day a sledge, lined with fur, drawn by spirited horses, clinking the bells that studded the harness, drew up before the door. Serge and his mother stepped into it, waving a friendly farewell to the household that crowded around with noisy benedictions. ...
— The Little Russian Servant • Henri Greville
... against the anvil or placed upright on a heavy piece of metal lying on the floor or that is sunk into the floor. While standing on this heavy piece the metal may be upset by striking down on the end with a heavy hammer or the sledge. If a bend appears while upsetting, it should be straightened by hammering back into shape ...
— Oxy-Acetylene Welding and Cutting • Harold P. Manly
... made by river-steamer, but during the winter months this weary journey must be accomplished in uncovered sleighs, and is one of great severity and privation, especially for women. At Yakutsk reindeer-sledge conveys the ill-assorted pair ever northwards for another six hundred miles to Verkhoyansk. The reader has seen the difficulties which we experienced crossing the mountains, where delicate women on their way to exile ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... southeasterly direction; there being no attempt to cross Siberia at any point in a straight line. By this time the river was frozen, and the only concession Rezanov would make to his enfeebled frame was an arrangement to cover the entire journey by private sledge instead of employing the swifter course of post sledge on the long stretches and horseback on the ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... of keys. We'll investigate. I can't have strange women gallivanting about the place as if they owned it. This is no trysting place for Juliets, Herr Schmick. We'll get to the bottom of this at once. Here, you Rudolph, fetch a couple of lanterns. Max, get a sledge or two from the forge. There is a forge. I saw it yesterday out there back of the stables. So don't try to tell me there isn't one. If we can't unlock the doors, we'll smash 'em in. They're mine, and I'll knock 'em to smithereens if ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... that was ever heard of the Peterkins, Agamemnon was on his way to Madagascar, Solomon John was at Rustchuk, and the little boys at Gratz; Mr. and Mrs. Peterkin, in a comfortable sledge, were on their way from Tobolsk to Yakoutsk; and Elizabeth Eliza was passing her honeymoon in the ...
— The Last of the Peterkins - With Others of Their Kin • Lucretia P. Hale
... Slates (roofing) tegmentajxo. Slaughter (animals) bucxadi. Slaughter mortigi. Slaughter-house bucxejo. Slave sklavo. Slavery sklaveco. Slavish sklava. Slavishness sklavemo. Slay mortigi. Sled, sledge glitveturilo. Sleek glata. Sleep dormi. Sleet hajlnegxo. Sleeve maniko. Sleigh glitveturilo. Slender maldika. Slender (graceful) gracia. Slice trancxajxo. Slide glitejo. Slide gliti. Slight maldika. Slip faleti. Slip, let preterlasi. Slipper pantoflo. Slippery ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... Their confusion and dismay can more easily be imagined than described, but at length one man, with more self-possession than the rest, slipped out of his bag, scrambled from under the prostrate tent, and ran to the sledge for another gun; and it was well that he did so, for no sooner had he vacated his sleeping sack than Bruin seized it between his teeth, and shook it violently, with the evident intention of wreaking his vengeance ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... called a church meetin', and played a game of old sledge, to see who would call and demand satisfaction for the insult. As they all smoked, they couldn't tell who was hit, as their tobacker bill was ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 19, August 6, 1870 • Various
... of my companions. As it was, they nicknamed me 'the boarding-school miss.' I could never succeed in forcing myself to smoke. I studied—why conceal my shortcomings?—very lazily, especially at the beginning of the course. I went out a great deal. My aunt had bestowed on me a wide sledge, fit for a general, with a pair of sleek horses. At the houses of 'the gentry' my visits were rare, but at the theatre I was quite at home, and I consumed masses of tarts at the restaurants. For all that, I permitted ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... in it, a note of grief and lamentation. And in their shacks and tepees the forest people sniffed the air of frosty mornings, and soaked their traps in fish-oil and beaver-grease, and made their moccasins, and mended snow-shoe and sledge, for the cry of the loon said that winter was creeping down out of the North. And the swamps grew silent. The cow moose no longer mooed to her young. In place of it, from the open plain and "burn" rose the defiant challenge of bull to bull and the deadly clash of ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... and the Moon grew dim. "With my sledge, And my wedge, I have knocked off her edge! If only I blow right fierce and grim, The creature will soon ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... smoked silently at the edge of one of the docks. In the distance of the street's end a French priest added the quaintness of his cassock to the exotic atmosphere of the scene. At once a pack of the fierce sledge-dogs left their foraging for the offal of the fisheries, to bound challenging in the direction of poor Deuce. That highbred animal fruitlessly attempted to combine dignity with a discretionary lurking between our legs. We made demonstrations ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... the hillside, and allowed by negligence and indifference to slip into the nearest hollow. Too far from the truncated kopjes to reap any benefit from them. Close enough to feel the radiation of a sledge-hammer sun from their bevelled summits—close enough to be the channel, in summer, of every scorching blast diverted by them; in winter, every icy draught. Pestilential place, goal of whirlwinds and dust-devils, ankle-deep in desert ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... through the windy, and jist peart enough to pack away over them cliffs every inch of snow that falls. I'll jist skirmish round in and out o' them drifts on these four wheels whar ye can't drag one o' them flat-bottomed dry-goods boxes through a drift." Bill had a California whip's contempt for a sledge. But he was warmly seconded by Thatcher, who had the next best thing to experience, the instinct that taught him to read character, and take advantage of another man's experience. "Them that wants to stop kin do so," said Bill authoritatively, cutting the Gordian ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... strikes us as having an American twang, but which was familiar to the lexicographer. His only excursion to the borders of such regions was in the very forcible review of Soane Jenyns, who had made a jaunty attempt to explain the origin of evil by the help of a few of Pope's epigrams. Johnson's sledge-hammer smashes his flimsy platitudes to pieces with an energy too good for such a foe. For speculation, properly so called, there was no need. The review, like 'Rasselas,' is simply a vigorous protest against the popular attempt to make things pleasant by a feeble dilution ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... fall of snow we have had, Marie," said M. Dupois, "and how bitterly cold it is! Why, already the thermometer is ten degrees below zero. I hate such deep snow. I must go out with the sledge the first thing in the morning and ...
— The Children's Pilgrimage • L. T. Meade
... the figure in a few minutes was hewn into a thousand pieces, which were scattered over the floor. A wild shout of triumph succeeded. All sorts of weapons of destruction were now produced by the mob. Some had sledge-hammers in their hands, others axes, and others bludgeons; while ladders, handspikes, and ropes and blocks were brought into the church. Immediately they went to work. The images which could be most ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... Freedom's banner on our Western outposts? ["No!" "No!"] Should we not stand by our neighbors who seek to better their conditions in Kansas and Nebraska? ["Yes!" "Yes!"] Can we as Christian men, and strong and free ourselves, wield the sledge or hold the iron which is to manacle anew an already oppressed race? ["No!" "No!"] "Woe unto them," it is written, "that decree unrighteous decrees and that write grievousness which they have prescribed." Can we afford to sin any more deeply against ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... sledge-hammer which strikes the iron on the anvil first, if it be heavy work, but the hand-hammer ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... each. In this, before, some detached links from the chain were placed, whilst a huge smith proceeded to rivet each from behind. Fixing a kind of movable anvil behind the convict's back, the fetter that encircled his neck was brought with its joint upon it, and half a dozen blows of the sledge riveted the captive inextricably to the main chain and to his twenty-nine comrades. The smith must be adroit at his task, and the convict steady in his position; for, as the fetter is tight round the neck, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 546, May 12, 1832 • Various
... heaven, the waves of the sea made me hear their poems, the birds instructed me with their melodies, the long-haired trees invited me to their concerts. And all the songs I gathered together, I rolled them up in a skin, I carried them away in my beautiful little holiday sledge, I deposited them in the bottom of a chest of brass, upon the highest ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... feast them royally, and send them home heaped with all manner of good things; while as for meeting Ivo Taillebois's men, if they had but three to one against them, there was a fair chance of killing a few, and carrying off their clothes and weapons, which would be useful. So they made a sledge, tied beef-bones underneath it, put Torfrida thereon, well wrapped in deer and fox and badger skin, and then putting on their skates, swept her over the fen to Crowland, singing like ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... under the sledge: the hay of Egypt, Arabia, Syria, etc. The old country custom is to pull up the corn by handfuls from the roots, leaving the land perfectly bare: hence the "plucking up" of Hebrew Holy Writ. The object is to ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... embarrassment, the academical uniform. He entered the section of physics and mathematics. Robust, rosy-cheeked, bearded, and taciturn, he produced a strange impression on his companions; they did not suspect that this austere man, who came so punctually to the lectures in a wide village sledge with a pair of horses, was inwardly almost a child. He appeared to them to be a queer kind of pedant; they did not care for him, and made no overtures to him, and he avoided them. During the first two years ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... the interior were vast trackless forests of fir-trees, and moss-covered swamps in which in summertime a man would sink up to his neck. Now, in September, they were already frozen solid, and you travelled over them with a sledge and a team of reindeer, bundled up in furs and looking, except for the whiskers, like the pictures of Santa Claus you had seen when you were a kid. But most of the traffic of the army was upon the rivers which cut the forests and ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... fishing-hooks and lines; models of canoes; skin dresses, men's boots from Kotzebue's Sound; Lapland trousers; utensils made of the horn of the musk ox; Esquimaux woman's hair ornaments; over the cases hereabouts the sledge which Sir E. Parry brought from Baffin's Bay, and a canoe from Behring's Straits; waterproof fishing jackets, made from the intestines of the whale; harpoons of bone tipped with meteoric iron; specimens of rude sculpture from these northern regions; clubs; ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... Royal. Many already have fled to the forest, and lurk on its outskirts, Waiting with anxious hearts the dubious fate of tomorrow. Arms have been taken from us, and warlike weapons of all kinds; Nothing is left but the blacksmith's sledge and the scythe of the mower." Then with a pleasant smile made answer the jovial farmer:— "Safer are we unarmed, in the midst of our flocks and our cornfields, Safer within these peaceful dikes besieged ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... Blitherwood ball. (The sparring match on the lawn, under the glare of a stupendous cluster of lights, resulted in favour of Mr. Bullhead Brown, who successfully—if accidentally—landed with considerably energy on the left lower corner of Mr. Sledge-hammer Smith's diaphragm, completely dividing the purse with him in four scientifically satisfactory rounds, although they came to blows over it afterwards when Mr. Smith told Mr. Brown what he thought of him for hitting with such fervour just after ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... dogskins. The drivers disputed as to whose troyka should go ahead, and the youngest, seating himself sideways with a dashing air, swung his long knout and shouted to the horses. The troyka-bells tinkled and the sledge-runners squeaked ...
— Father Sergius • Leo Tolstoy
... his—wrought with so much consistent purpose out of much variety of experience—brings with it an intellectual economy of its own and a sincere and useful sort of intellectual enlightenment. He may be figured as a Thor wielding with power and effect a sledge-hammer in the cause of national righteousness; and the sympathetic observer, who is not stunned by the noise of the hammer, may occasionally be rewarded by the sight of something more illuminating than a piece of rebellious metal beaten into shape. He may be rewarded by certain ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... It was a book that could not be ignored nor dismissed with a word. There was something very unusual about it, about its solidity and mass, the thoroughness and firmness of texture, and it came down like a blow from a sledge hammer among the slighter and more sprightly performances of ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... one knows, is extremely short, having already begun, it was necessary to prepare for our return. The two Indians rolled together the straw mats which they had brought, and bent them in front so as to form a sort of sledge. We sat down upon these, and stretching out our legs, allowed ourselves to glide down on this vehicle. The rapidity with which we were precipitated increased to such a degree, that our descent was rather ...
— Wonders of Creation • Anonymous
... delivered absurd addresses upon his exaltation. The mock pope then created a number of cardinals, at whose head he rode through the streets in procession, his seat of state being a cask of brandy which was carried on a sledge drawn by ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... off. These men, who are strictly watched while at work, put the dressed black-lead into casks holding about one hundred-weight each, in which state it leaves the mine. The casks are conveyed down the side of the mountain in a curious manner. Each cask is fixed upon a light sledge with two wheels, and a man, who is well used to the precipitous path, walks down in front of the sledge, taking care that it does not acquire momentum enough to overpower him. When the cask has been thus guided safely to the bottom, ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... This youth was hardly brawny at all; as Vikings went, he was even slender. She turned her attention to the other man. He was big enough, certainly; the fist that he was waving in the air was like nothing so much as a sledge-hammer, and there was a likeness to the Jotuns in his ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... Aldgate to Newgate one day, and from Newgate to Tyburn two days afterwards, and to stand in the pillory five times a year as long as he lived. This fearful sentence was actually inflicted on the rascal. Being unable to stand after his first flogging, he was dragged on a sledge from Newgate to Tyburn, and flogged as he was drawn along. He was so strong a villain that he did not die under the torture, but lived to be afterwards pardoned and rewarded, though not to be ever believed in any more. Dangerfield, the only other one of that ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... exempted in the manner I have stated, drawn to the place of execution. This was originally an ignominious incident of the terrible penalty, and required that the criminal should be rudely pulled along over the ground, behind a horse; later, however, a hurdle or wicker frame, or a sledge,—that is, as we call it, a sled,—was used, either from motives of humanity, or in order to prolong the life of the traitor through subsequent stages of the punishment. According to Sir Matthew Hale, ...
— The Trial and Execution, for Petit Treason, of Mark and Phillis, Slaves of Capt. John Codman • Abner Cheney Goodell, Jr.
... the noblest looking, the best leader, and seal and bear dog, ever met with. One day he was out with dogs and sleigh where the ice was still firm, when suddenly a seal was noticed ahead. In an instant the dogs were dashing towards the prey, drawing the sledge after them at a marvellous rate, led by Smile. The seal for a moment seemed frightened, and kept on the ice a second or two too long; for just as he plunged, Smile caught him by the tail and nippers. The seal struggled violently, ...
— Stories of Animal Sagacity • W.H.G. Kingston
... off shore, he could see Mrs. Abel Zachariah, the yellow sunshine spread all about her, splitting his morning catch on a rude table at the foot of the sloping rocks. Above her stood the little tent that was their summer home, and here and there the big sledge dogs, now idle and lazy and fat, sprawled blissfully upon the rocks enjoying the August morning, for this was their season of rest ...
— Bobby of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... Jago," confided the second laborer to Barron, when his companion had turned aside to get some steel wedges and a sledge-hammer. "Er's well-knawn in these paarts—a reg'lar cure. Er used tu work ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... the right place. The Lapps themselves would be entirely at a loss for any indication as to where this food should be sought when covered by the deep snow. The reindeer will carry, lashed to its back, a hundred and thirty pounds, or drag upon the snow, when harnessed to a sledge, two hundred and fifty pounds, travelling ten miles an hour for several consecutive hours, without apparent fatigue. The country over which these people roam is included in Northern Norway and Sweden, with a portion of Northwestern Russia and ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... vast and irregular plains of ice, which seemed to have no end. Some of my comrades groaned, and my own mind began to grow watchful with anxious thoughts, when a strange sight suddenly attracted our attention and diverted our solicitude from our own situation. We perceived a low carriage, fixed on a sledge and drawn by dogs, pass on towards the north, at the distance of half a mile; a being which had the shape of a man, but apparently of gigantic stature, sat in the sledge and guided the dogs. We watched the rapid progress of the traveller ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... Claus came in his sledge heaped high with presents, urging his team of reindeer across the field. He was on his way to the farmhouse where Betsey lived with her ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... were not high enough to clear the big stones on the beach, so we took them off and replaced them by two runners so as to form a kind of sledge, which answered much better, although many pieces were jerked off en route, by reason of the rugged path and primitive construction of the sledge. As Alec remarked, they served as guide posts, so that there was no losing the way. This idea I got by reading Catlin's "North American ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... had made a sledge for the boys, just a rough box on broad, wooden runners, to be sure, but it glided lightly and swiftly over the hard, frozen surface of snow, and the daintiest silver-tipped sledge could not have ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 5, March, 1878 • Various
... man, thought Emmeline, when roused to anger; his words must descend like sledge-hammers. And it would not take much to anger him. For all that, he had by no means a truculent countenance. He was trying to smile, and his features softened agreeably enough. The more closely she observed him, the less grew Emmeline's wonder that Louise ...
— The Paying Guest • George Gissing
... was naturally to be expected. The greater part of his armour lay beside him, but covered with his cassock to screen it from morning dew; while in his leathern doublet, with arms bare to the shoulder, and a huge sledge-hammer in his hand, he set an example to the mechanics who worked under ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... Freiburg or at Heidelburg, is a Christmas market in any one of the old German cities in the hill country, when the streets and the open places are covered with crisp clean snow, and the mountains are white with it, and the moon shines on the ancient houses, and the tinkle of sledge bells reaches you when you escape from the din of the market, and look down at the bustle of it from some silent place, a high window perhaps, or the high empty steps leading into the cathedral. The air is cold and still, and ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... Blackmantle? and alive, old fellow? Well clone, my hearty; I saw you set to with that fresh water devil from Charwell, the old Bargee, and a pretty milling you gave him. I had intended to have seconded you, but just as I was making up, a son of Vulcan let fly his sledge-hammer slap at my smeller, and stopped up one of my oculars, so I was obliged to turn to and finish him off; and when I had completed the job, you had bolted; not, however, without leaving your marks behind you. But where's Eglantine? ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... constitutions ever given to mortal man. A quarryman once told me that my father had appeared at the quarry at six o'clock in the morning looking quite fresh and hearty, when, taking up the heaviest sledge-hammer he could find, he gayly challenged the men to try who could throw it farthest. None of them came near him, on which he turned and said with a laugh of satisfaction, —"Not bad that, for a man who drank thirty glasses of brandy the day before!" Whether he had ever approached ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... shanty of the composite order of architecture—it having a foundation of stone, succeeded by logs, a gable of coffin misfits and cracker-boxes, and a roof of bark and canvas—Buffle and three other miners were playing "old sledge." ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... Helen to bring the rest of the maids of honor and her goods to join her at Komorn. It was early spring, and snow was still on the ground, and the Lady of Kottenner and her faithful nameless assistant travelled in a sledge; but two Hungarian noblemen went with them, and they had to be most careful in concealing their arrangements. Helen had with her the queen's signet, and keys; and her friend had a file in each shoe, and keys under ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... blacksmith, and Reade was quite as proud of this as he was of the fact that another ancestor had been lord chief justice of England. From the sturdy strain which came to him from the blacksmith he, perhaps, derived that sledge-hammer power with which he wrote many of his most famous chapters, and which he used in newspaper controversies with his critics. From his legal ancestors there may have come to him the love of litigation, ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... some years—the years I have described above as years of peace and concord in Germany—till suddenly, on the occasion of two attempts made in 1878, by Hoedel and by Nobiling against the emperor's life, he came down upon that sect as with a sledge-hammer. His famous anti-socialist bill was at first rejected. It passed into law only after a dissolution, the electors having in their affectionate pity for the wounded emperor unequivocally given their verdict in favor of suppression. It has since been reaccepted three times by an unwilling ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... better still, in some province across the Bosphorus, seated on his own carpet, in his own shop, or in his coffee-house; or, better still, in his harem, with his customers, or neighbors, or his family of wives around him. How much does the Esquimaux in London resemble the Esquimaux seated on his sledge, shouting at his team of dogs, and posting over his frozen and trackless route, with a horizon of ice around him? That is traveling, and this is botany; and of all sciences botany best suits the traveler. ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... cloak, helped back into the wagon, as if deliverance was now sure and immediate. But Jack on arriving speedily dissipated that illusive hope; they could only get through the gorge by taking off the wheels of the wagon, placing the axle on rude sledge-runners of split saplings, which, with their assistance, he would fashion in a couple of hours at his cabin and bring down to the gorge. The only other alternative would be for them to come to his cabin and remain there while he went for assistance to the nearest station, but that would take several ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... to draw them, thirteen to each. The he bargained for a large stock of frozen and dry fish for the dogs, and other provisions for themselves. But what mostly puzzled the people were his assiduous efforts to get a man to go with them who would harness twenty dogs to an extra sledge. To the astonishment of everybody, three young men at last volunteered, and three extra sledges were ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various
... Montgomery's, but was dusky and mottled, with one huge mole amid the mat of tangled black hair which thatched his mighty breast. His weight bore no relation to his strength, for those huge shoulders and great arms, with brown, sledge-hammer fists, would have fitted the heaviest man that ever threw his cap into a ring. But his loins and legs were slight in proportion. Montgomery, on the other hand, was as symmetrical as a Greek statue. It would be an encounter between ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... coming from the devastated areas tells us that our brave allies the Chinese are still on deck, salvaging ammunition after their own unique fashion of rapping shells smartly over the nose-caps with sledge-hammers to test whether they be really duds ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 18, 1919 • Various
... removed the paddles. Hurry was furious when he found that he was deprived of the means of proceeding. He first approached the Indian with loud menaces, and even Deerslayer stood aghast at the probable consequences. March shook his sledge-hammer fists and flourished his arms as he drew near the Indian, and all expected he would attempt to fell the Delaware to the earth; one of them, at least, was well aware that such an experiment would be followed by ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... exchanged for provisions. The dog teams were very interesting with their intelligent well trained Indian dogs. There were usually three or four dogs driven tandem with a simple harness consisting of a collar and a strap around the body of each. The driver always ran or walked by the side of the sledge never sitting on it. We see pictures of dog teams in Alaska, for instance, with a dozen or more dogs, but that would have been impossible in a heavily wooded country as this ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... in with a settler going to Askatoon with his dogs. Seeing how exhausted she was, he made her ride a few miles upon his sledge; then she sped on ahead again till she came to ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... the shadowy creature of Victor's story. At the mere suggestion of a squaw's presence in that valley their blood-tide surged through their veins like a torrent of fire, and their pulses were set beating like sledge-hammers. A squaw! A squaw! That was their cry. Why not ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... destruction. All he asked of God was to escape their trampling hoofs, and though he gained he dug the rowel and plied the quirt, unmindful of what he did. On they came; the chorus of their fear swelled like the voice of a mighty cataract, the pound, pound, pound of their hoofs ringing like mighty sledge-hammers. ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... deepest reverence for the good book. The criticism of the professor stirred me to a rejoinder. I, of course, was in no way equal to meeting him, with his vast erudition and scholarly accomplishments. I could only give what the Bible critic would regard as valueless, a sledge-hammer expression of faith. Somebody took the speech down. Doctor John Hall, the famous preacher and for many years pastor of the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, told me that the Bible and the church societies ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... he might, he discovered no ax in the place, but in place of it he unearthed a sledge-hammer. Though corroded, it was still quite serviceable. Oddly enough, the ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... fought out again; in many places were noticed small groups so intent upon their own little conflicts that they seemed to be having no part in the big game, at all. But these aerial observers realized that the tremendous sledge-hammer blows, directed with consummate skill and resiliency, left the mass of wastage on the German side; for, with strategical and tactical problems suddenly changed from boxed-in trench warfare to the elastic manoeuvers of open battle, the directing mind which is more elastic, all ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... lot of fun that first winter, but none that I can remember more gratefully than our trip in the sledgehouse—a tight little house fitted and fastened to a big sledge. Uncle Eb had to go to mill at Hillsborough, some twelve miles away, and Hope and I, after much coaxing and many family counsels, got leave to go with him. The sky was cloudless, and the frosty air was all aglow in the sunlight ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... two weeks?" returned Karr; "if your Majesty commands it, I will seat myself this very hour upon a sledge, and in three days and nights I shall be in Bugulminszka. On the fourth day I shall arrange my cards, and on the fifth I shall send word to this dandy that I am the challenger. On the sixth day I shall give 'Volat' to the rascal, and the seventh and eighth days I shall have him as ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Polish • Various
... looked at once incredulous and disappointed. "Surely that's not thy best lick, lad," he said, in an aggrieved tone; "why, old as I am, I could better it mysel'." Thus saying, the miner drew back a fist like a sledge-hammer, and let drive a blow at "Blacky" that sent the pointer up ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe
... military tactics beyond the simple evolutions of the drill. Only a few days before had he first seen the flash of a hostile gun. But a rifle was as familiar to his hands as one of the fingers upon them. His body was ridged and laced with muscles that had grown to seasoned sinews from swinging a sledge in a blacksmith-shop. He had never seen the man or crowd of men of whom he was afraid. He had hunted in the mountains while forked lightning flashed around him. He had heard the thunder crash in mountain coves as loud as the burst of any German shell. He was of that ...
— Sergeant York And His People • Sam Cowan
... of the St. Louis platform it was impossible for him to succeed in his alleged purpose. Now, my friends, let us suppose Mr. Wolcott and his two associates are in England talking with the rich moneyed men for international bimetallism and Mr. Wolcott is dealing out sledge-hammer argument in favor of international bimetallism, using the same argument in England the Bryan Democrats used in the campaign of 1896 in the United States. The financial men of England would then say to Mr. Wolcott, did you say that bimetallism in ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus
... ready to take flight the instant they should come within sure and deadly range, were ideas which did not follow each other in rapid succession through his brain, but darted upon the young hunter's quick perceptions instantaneously, and caused his heart to beat on his ribs like a sledge-hammer, and the blood to fly ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... time being his body was laid on a flat boulder in the shelter of a shallow cave in the cliffside nearby—later they would bring a sledge to fetch him into the village. For a long time little Snjolfur stood by old Snjolfur and stroked his white hair; he murmured something as he did it, but no one heard what he said. But he did not cry and he showed no dismay. The men with the ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... animal; for this he is carefully trained from his infancy, and undergoes severe and frequent floggings to break him regularly into the team. He becomes then remarkably submissive, comes at his master's call, and allows himself quietly to be harnessed to the sledge. In fastening them care is taken not to let them go abreast: they are tied by separate thongs, of unequal lengths, to a horizontal bar on the forepart of the sledge; an old knowing one leads the way, running ten to twenty paces a head, directed by the driver's ...
— The Moravians in Labrador • Anonymous
... distance off there was a fold in the moor, and while Osborn wondered whether he would walk to the top a man came over the brow, leading two horses that hauled a clumsy sledge. Another team followed and presently four advanced across ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... sledge passed the window. The man, a sturdy, thick-set figure in the Wirtemberg peasant's short, well-fitting, dark-blue coat, adorned with rows of round knob silver buttons. He wore a peaked fur cap drawn down over the ears. The woman was in a thick blue frieze cape and elaborate ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... wasp lying on its back. Indeed, from where Leonard and Juanna stood, the span of ice at this point seemed to be no thicker than a silver thread, while Otter and the stone might have been a fly upon the thread. Now of a sudden Leonard distinctly saw the rock sledge and its living burden, which just then was travelling its swiftest, move upwards as though it had leaped into the air and then continue its course along the rising place which represented the throat of the wasp, till at ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... aeonian, steady and tall, With its back to creation's flaming wall, Stands at the foot of a dim, wide stair. Swing, swang, its pendulum goes, Swing—swang—here—there! Its tick and its tack like the sledge-hammer blows Of Tubal Cain, the mighty man! But they strike on the anvil of never an ear, On the heart of man and woman they fall, With an echo of blessing, an echo of ban; For each tick is a hope, each tack is a fear, Each tick is a Where, each tack a Not here, Each tick is a kiss, ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... soldiers, who, after a slight resistance, fled for their lives. The foremost of the insurgents dashed into the enclosed arena, to rescue the prisoner. It was too late. The executioner, even as he fled, had crushed the victim's head with a sledge hammer, and pierced him through and through with a poniard. Some of the bystanders maintained afterwards that his fingers and lips were seen to move, as if in feeble prayer, for a little time longer, until, as the fire mounted, he fell into ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... and the niggler, the men and women whose stroke goes no farther back than their knuckles, I may frankly say that charcoal is not for them. The blow is a sledge blow going from the spinal column, not the pitapat of a jeweller's hammer elaborating the repousse ...
— Outdoor Sketching - Four Talks Given before the Art Institute of Chicago; The Scammon Lectures, 1914 • Francis Hopkinson Smith
... to get home first," said the master, and at the same moment a sea struck the windward quarter with the force of a sledge-hammer, and the block at the masthead began ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... inner back of iron, or some kind of metal. Each new obstacle served only to inflame his impatience, and to provoke his temper. He forgot the bed in the next room, and everything else in the world except the attainment of his object, and running downstairs, returned with a large sledge-hammer that he found in the coal-hole. With his strength concentrated in one blow, he swung it against the back of the bureau, and had the satisfaction of finding his wishes gratified. The concussion moved some secret spring somewhere, ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... in snow, and evening. They drove in an open sledge over the snow: the train had been so hot and stifling. And the hotel, with the golden light glowing under the porch, seemed like ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... teaching him. You never did see such a joke as old Blunderbore screwing up his eyes at the balls, and making at them with his mallet like a sledge-hammer. He and Alice and Robin and that Bisset curate are playing against Bill, two of the girls, and Shapcote—Bexley against Minsterham, and little Bobbie's a real out- and-outer. She'll make her side ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... her daughters, and she appeared not to care very deeply for her sons, but of the three she had a decided preference for Winn. Winn had a wicked temper, an unshakable nerve, and had inherited the strength of Sir Peter's muscles and the sledge-hammer weight of Lady Staines's wit. He had been expelled from his private school for unparalleled insolence to the head master; a repetition of his summing up of that gentleman's life and conduct delighted his mother, though she assisted ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... with Trina constantly. They laughed together—she demurely, her lips closed tight, her little chin thrust out, her small pale nose, with its adorable little freckles, wrinkling; he roared with all the force of his lungs, his enormous mouth distended, striking sledge-hammer blows upon his knee ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... Normandy was impossible, and therefore the magical storm was lulled. The hills and valleys shone brilliantly in their white attire of snow, and Folko used sometimes, with skates on his feet, to draw his lady in a light sledge over the glittering frozen lakes and streams. On the other hand, the bear-hunts of the lord of the castle and his son took a still more desperate and ...
— Sintram and His Companions • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque |
