"Tongs" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... make an Anuile to worke vpon, and to vse a pickaxe in stead of a sledge to beate withall, and also to occupy two small bellowes in steade of one payre of greater Smiths bellowes. And for lacke of small Yron for the easier making of the nayles, they were forced to breake their tongs, grydiron, and ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... it breaks all the horses' legs in the county,' said the cook, turning from the spectacle, knocking open the oven-door with the tongs, glancing critically in, and slamming it ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... as he isn't fit to touch you with a pair of tongs, is about the least as he can do, miss, and, as for letting you alone, I didn't know as he ever proposed doing anything else. But that reminds me, miss, though I am sure I don't know why it should, how as Mrs. Hawkins, as was ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... dream like this," he laughed, "or I shall get absent-minded and pack fire-tongs instead of boots. It looks like a jumble sale already!" And he stood on a heap of things to wedge them ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... gone, The time for drinking tea comes on, The kettle filled, the water boiled, The cream provided, biscuits piled, And lamp prepared, I straight engage The Lilliputian equipage, Of dishes, saucers, spoons and tongs, And all the et cetera which thereto belongs; Which ranged in order and decorum I carry in and set before 'em, Then pour the green or bohea out, ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... that which he pretended to have seen, our great Lord Bishop heard of it, and sent and took that baker's boy, and though he cried for mercy, swearing the whole tale was an empty boast, they put out his bold eyes with heated tongs, and hanged him from the very branches he had climbed. They'd do the like to thee, thou little vain man, if Mary Antony reported on thy ways. Wouldst like to hang, ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... spinning-wheels, which, like old chairs, tall clocks, and warming-pans, have now become objects of curiosity and interest to those who take a fancy to antique articles. It has become fashionable to have these things to adorn our Queen Anne houses. And brass andirons and shovels and tongs have come into request, so that we may enjoy the luxury of an open wood fire, which, to our mind, is one of the most cheerful things in this world. Some one has remarked "that to be well-dressed gives a feeling of satisfaction that religion fails ...
— The Olden Time Series: Vol. 2: The Days of the Spinning-Wheel in New England • Various
... to bring the business to an end, it was because they could no longer remain separate and solitary. Each night, the drowned man visited them, insomnia stretched them on beds of live coal and turned them over with fiery tongs. The state of enervation in which they lived, nightly increased the fever of their blood, which resulted in atrocious ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... feet to the fireplace and caught the iron tongs with which they were wont to place pieces of wood upon the fire. She struck him a hard blow upon the arm between ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... vision, which was surely more than a vision, was the Vision of Grace. One of the fiery attendants, who hovered on quivering wing ready to execute the orders of the Divine King, receiving a command by some unexplained mode of communication, flew to the altar, and, taking up the tongs, seized with them a stone from the altar fire. It was neither a coal, as our rendering gives it, nor a brand, but a heated stone, such as was used, and is used at the present day, in the East, for conveying ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... questions hammered at her brain as she poured herself out a cup of tea. How she had once longed to be allowed to pour tea from that silver tea-pot, and pick up the sugar with those dainty little tongs, which granny would never allow her to touch. What a proud day it would be, so she used to think, when she might! But now—now that the day had come, she found no pride or pleasure in it, only a sort of shrinking. It seemed to her to be taking advantage of granny's ...
— Anxious Audrey • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... savage at him, you remember," she said. "I was going to take his head off. Then when it came to it, and I had told him what I thought of him and the whole disgraceful scrape he had got me into—Oh, I went for him, hammer and tongs! Incidentally, I made him tell me what it was I had said. Pretty bad, wasn't it!—Well, do you know, he cried, he felt so. He just cried on his knees, and didn't try to get rid of any of the blame. All he wanted was that I should forgive him. ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... toward Tonopah and Goldfield. We began buying quietly for the control with the stock at nineteen. Naturally the Transcontinental people caught on, and in twenty-four hours we were at it, hammer and tongs." ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... ritual of refection with Harry as acolyte. 'If he doesn't come—well, he doesn't come,' she thought of her husband, as she smiled interrogatively at Arthur Twemlow, holding a lump of sugar aloft in the tongs. ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... following procedures as having been in use, according to legend, to determine the justice of the suspicion: Flinging the child on a dung-heap; putting in the oven; holding a red-hot shovel before the child's face; heating a poker red-hot to mark a cross on its forehead; heating the tongs red-hot to seize it by the nose; throwing on, or into, the fire; suspending over the fire in a pot; throwing the child naked on the glowing embers at midnight; throwing into lake, river, or sea (258. ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... embarrassed, and evidently regretting that she had not bridled her tongue. It is true she might reasonably hope, that the magistrate had imperfectly heard her words, and had failed to seize their full purport, for two or three red-hot coals having fallen from the grate on the hearth, he had taken up the tongs, and seemed to be engrossed in the task of artistically ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... he decided not to let slip a second opportunity. Weak and unaided, he made what shift he could to deal with the intricacies of breakfast, choking back his irritability when he found himself grasping empty air in place of the teapot handle, sending the sugar-tongs clattering to the floor, and deluging his saucer by pouring the milk outside the cup. For the moment, to this man of independent spirit, these trivial indignities seemed more unendurable than the ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... light-hearted style. 'There is a review of your last book in the Scorpion', he says, 'which will amuse you. It is very malicious, and evidently the offspring of personal spite, but it is very clever.' Then you go down to your club, and take the thing up with the tongs, when nobody is looking, and make yourself very miserable; or you buy it, going home in the cab, and, having spoilt your appetite for dinner with it, tear it up very small, throw it out of window, and swear you have never ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... of ale, some milk, and a little yeast. Beat it well, till it forms a thick paste, and let it stand three or four hours before the fire to rise. Lay it in small pieces on a hot iron or fryingpan, with a pair of buttered tongs, till it is lightly browned. Eat the waffles with fine sugar sifted over, or a little ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... night that James Sherring and Thomas Hillary were there, James Sherring sat down in the chimney to fill a pipe of tobacco. He used the tongs to lift a coal to light his pipe, and by-and-by the tongs were drawn up the stairs and were cast upon the bed. The same night one of the maids left her shoes by the fire, and they were carried up into the chamber, and the ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... rage he forgot all the restraints of etiquette. He seized from the fireplace the tongs, and would have broken the head of the minister had not Madame de Maintenon rushed between them. The king ordered a messenger immediately to be dispatched to countermand the order. He declared that if a single house ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... had had charge of the vegetable garden of one of the great Menlo Park estates. His disaster had come in the form of a fight over a game of fan tan in the Chinese quarter at Redwood City. His companion, Chan Chi, had been a hatchet-man of note, in the old fighting days of the San Francisco tongs. But a quarter of century of discipline in the prison vegetable gardens had cooled his blood and turned his hand from hatchet to hoe. These two assistants had arrived in Glen Ellen like precious goods in bond and been receipted for by the local deputy ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... beheld the whole vicinage of boys and girls, old men, and old women, all the furrows and wrinkles of the latter filled up with malice for the time; the old men armed with prongs, pitch-forks, clubs, and catsticks; the old women with mops, brooms, fire-shovels, tongs, and pokers; and the younger fry with dirt, stones, and brickbats, gathering as they ran like a snowball, in pursuit of the wind-outstripping prowler; all the mongrel curs of the circumjacencies yelp, yelp, yelp, at their ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... they declined, and as the short rush-light was nearly burned out, and as she had not another ready, she got what is called a cam or grisset, put it on the hearth-stone, with a portion of hog's lard in it; she then placed the lower end of the tongs in the fire, until the broad portion of them, with which the turf is gripped, became red hot; she then placed the lard in the grisset between them, and squeezed it until nothing remained but pure oil; through this she slowly drew the peeled rushes, which were instantly saturated ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... two youngest Kenway girls trooped into the kitchen, Popocatepetl was chasing a stray feather about the floor and in diving behind the big range for it, she knocked down the shovel, tongs and poker, which were standing ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... Remember also that you leave them nowhere, but with these snuff-dishes, that the temple may be cleared of them. Do with the snuff as the neat housewife doth with the toad which she finds in her garden. She takes the fork, or a pair of tongs, and therewith doth throw it over the pales. Cast them away, I say, with fear, zeal, care, revenge, and with great indignation, and then your church, your conversation, your fingers, and all, will be kept white and clean (2 ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... that Mr. Barry was pitch. She knew that Mr. Barry had seen Hart, and had seen Tyrrwhit, and had been bargaining with them. She excused her father because he was her father; but according to her thinking there should have been no dealings with such men as these, except at the end of a pair of tongs. ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... moment Winona did not realize what he had done. By the time she reached the hearth the paper was already half consumed. She made a snatch at it with the tongs, but a flame sprang up and forestalled her. She had just time to read the words "last Will and Testament of me Har—" before the whole sank into ashes. She turned to her brother with ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... spoke just now about guilders. You meant Lingard's money, I suppose. Well, whatever I have sold, and for whatever price, I never meant you—you of all people—to spoil my bargain. I feel pretty safe though. Even father, even Captain Lingard, would not touch you now with a pair of tongs; not with a ten-foot pole. ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... cells, And strong with thyme the new-made honey smells. So in their caves the brawny Cyclops sweat, When with huge strokes the stubborn wedge they beat, And all the unshapen thunderbolt complete; Alternately their hammers rise and fall; Whilst griping tongs turn round the glowing ball. With puffing bellows some the flames increase, And some in waters dip the hissing mass; 220 Their beaten anvils dreadfully resound, And AEtna shakes all o'er, and thunders under-ground. Thus, if great things we may with small compare, The busy swarms ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... about the clue myself. All I knows is it's got something to do with a public-house, 'The Hammer and Tongs,' which isn't far off there. They feels sure The Avenger was in the ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... done!' she exclaimed. Springing to the tongs she seized with them the portion of the writing yet unconsumed, and dragged it out of the fire. Ethelberta appeared at ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... Some had a board placed across their bodies, upon which a whole row of men stood; and as, in this unnatural state of mind, a kind of pleasure is derived from excruciating pain, some too were seen who caused their bosoms to be pinched with tongs, while others, with gowns closed at the feet, stood upon their heads, and remained in that position longer than would have been possible had they been in health. Pinault, the advocate, who belonged to this sect, barked like a dog some hours every day, and even this found ...
— The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania • Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker
... sister gave four silver table spoons, twelve silver tea spoons, and a pair of silver sugar tongs ...
— A Narrative of Some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, Fourth Part • George Mueller
... had changed places after the kick-off and the last period had begun, she speedily found that victory was not to be her portion. Mr. Robey sent in nearly a new team during that last ten minutes and the substitutes, fresh and eager, went at it hammer-and-tongs. Thacher enlisted fresh material, too, but it couldn't stop the onslaught that soon took the ball down the field to within close scoring distance of her goal. That Brimfield did not add another touchdown was only because her line, overanxious, was twice found off-side and penalised. ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour
... with the beasts which he had obtained by various means, but generally by theft. Highway robbery, though occasionally committed by all jointly or severally, was probably the peculiar department of the boldest spirits of the gang; whilst wielding the hammer and tongs was abandoned to those who, though possessed of athletic forms, were perhaps, like Vulcan, lame, or from some particular cause, moral or physical, unsuited for the other two very respectable avocations. The forge was generally placed in the heart of some mountain abounding in wood; the ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... some pictures and picture-books, and nearly all the curiosities she could find in the house. A cunning little cooking-stove, highly polished, was set against the chimney, and the drollest shovel and tongs seemed to be making "dumb love" to each other across the fireplace, like a black Punch and Judy. Then there was a pair of brazen-faced bellows, hanging, nose downward, on a brass nail; a large table in one corner, with a cake-board on it, and ...
— Prudy Keeping House • Sophie May
... juice and turneth it into blood, and serveth the body and members therewith, to the use of feeding. In the liver is the place of voluptuousness and liking of the flesh. The ends of the liver hight fibra, for they are straight and passing as tongs, and beclip the stomach, and give heat to digestion of meat: and they hight fibra, because the necromancers brought them to the altars of their god Phoebus and offered them there, and ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele
... the infinitely less exacting past, by means of the tutor, the Chamberlain, the Chancellor, the wide-seeing power beyond the throne, who very unselfishly intrigues his monarch in the way that he should go. But that sort of thing is remarkably like writing a letter by means of a pen held in lazy tongs instead of the hand. A very easily imagined series of accidents may place the destinies of Germany in such lazy tongs again. When that occasion comes, will the new class of capable men on which we have convinced ourselves in these anticipations ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... that he took a pair of tongs, caught hold of the lady by the feet, flung her into the furnace, and burnt her up; nothing was left of her but her ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... ninety; we have two curates: and an old Clergyman and his Archdeacon son came on a visit. The son having a shovel-hat, of course the Father could not be left behind. Shovel-hats (you know) came into use with the gift of Tongs. ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... my mind to more activity. I then set myself to inspect the apartments. In the largest there was a fire place, and a fire; but neither shovel, tongs nor poker; except a small stick as a substitute for a poker, with which I certainly could not knock a man down. The furniture consisted of a chair, a table, a broken looking-glass, and an old picture, in panel, of the sacrifice of Isaac, with Abraham's knife at ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... didn't poll many votes in New Ireland last year. I don't just remember how many—I have mislaid the figures; but I wish to tell you frankly—frankly, I say—that we did not poll many. What they need there, I think, is a determined man like yourself to pile into them hammer and tongs. That would be the way, I think. And you show me, Mr. Riley, a fair Republican increase in New Ireland—fifty out of five hundred, say—and you can lay out your own itinerary for the rest of the ...
— Sonnie-Boy's People • James B. Connolly
... brazen altar, whose length was twenty cubits, and its breadth the same, and its height ten, for the burnt-offerings. He also made all its vessels of brass, the pots, and the shovels, and the basons; and besides these, the snuffers and the tongs, and all its other vessels, he made of brass, and such brass as was in splendor and beauty like gold. The king also dedicated a great number of tables, but one that was large and made of gold, upon which they set the loaves of God; and he made ten ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... gone to have another encounter with the Evil One at Glastonbury, and is fashioning a pair of tongs for the purpose," said Edwy, alluding to the legend already current amongst the credulous populace; "and I wish," he muttered, "the Evil One would get the best of it and fly away with him. But" (in a louder tone) "he cannot return for a month, ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... pincers, or scissors, or shears, or tongs, the verb should be singular. Tidings, in Shakespeare's time, was used indiscriminately with a singular or plural verb, but is now generally regarded ...
— Slips of Speech • John H. Bechtel
... which had grown to great height since morning. In a trice spaces were cleared on the tables. Cups and saucers and knives and forks appeared as if by magic. In that portion of the room where the crimping-machines stood preparations for cooking commenced. The pincers and tongs of the rose-makers, and the pressing-molds of the leaf-workers, were taken off the fires, and in their place appeared stew-pans and spiders, and pots and kettles. Bacon and chops sputtered, steak sizzled; potatoes, beans, and corn stewed merrily. What had been but lately a flower-garden, by ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... a solid substance, the following method of procedure is adopted. A preliminary experiment is first made, in order to obtain some idea as to the degree of energy of the reaction, by bringing a little of the solid, placed upon the lid of a platinum crucible held in a pair of tongs, near the mouth of the delivery tube of the preparation apparatus. If a gaseous or liquid product results, and it is desirable to collect it for examination, small fragments of the solid are placed in a platinum tube ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 832, December 12, 1891 • Various
... the rails very much more in the middle, that being over the main part of the fire, than at the ends, so that they would naturally bend of their own weight; but the soldiers, to increase the damage, would take tongs and, one or two men at each end of the rail, carry it with force against the nearest tree and twist it around, thus leaving rails forming bands to ornament the forest trees of Georgia. All this work was going on at the same time, there being a sufficient number of men detailed for that purpose. ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... sacrilege. But reverence to Joe Kramer was a thing unknown. "Show me," he said, in reply to my outburst, "a single thing he ever wrote that wasn't sentimental bosh!" And we went at it hammer and tongs. ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... comfort round the fire in their sitting-room at St. Elgiva's, in that blissful interval between preparation and supper, when nothing very intellectual was expected from them, and they might amuse themselves as they wished. Irene, squatting on the rug, was armed with the tongs, and kept poking down the miniature volcanoes that arose in the coal; Elsie luxuriated in the rocking-chair all to herself; while Francie and Sylvia—a tight fit—shared the big basket-chair. In a corner ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... reply to the unspoken challenge, "I'm not afraid! Let's," and two flowing, woolly robes glided into the warm room, with its heart of glowing coals. One bold intruder nestled in the biggest arm-chair, the other fumbled for the tongs. ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... domestic hearth, who could not keep his hands for a moment from the fire-irons. Perhaps he might be justified if he said that they had been very much troubled of late in that House by gentlemen who could not keep their fingers from poker and tongs. But there had now fallen upon them a trouble of a nature much more serious in its effects than any that had come or could come from would-be reformers. A spirit of personal ambition, a wretched thirst for ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... for opening sheet metal cans, composed of a hand lever, B, carrying a tooth, c, and connected to tongs, A, or other equivalent means, capable of clamping said tooth-carrying lever to ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... child therein, there fell out of the same a great toad which ran up and down the hearth; and she, having a young youth only with her in the house, desired him to catch the toad and throw it into the fire, which the youth did accordingly, and held it there with the tongs; and as soon as it was in the fire it made a great and terrible noise; and after a space there was a flashing in the fire like gunpowder, making a noise like the discharge of a pistol, and thereupon the toad was no more seen nor heard. It was asked by the Court ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... kindled in the forge, and on working the bellows a strong flame was produced. All our tools were composed of coral; two long pieces served as tongs, and another as a hammer. Having heated the iron, Dick knocked it out into a long thin bar, and then placing it on the mass of coral which served as an anvil, cut it with successive sharp blows of his knife into small pieces. Each ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston
... rainbow (20); the manna (21); the rod (22); the shamir (23); the shape of written characters; the writing, and the tables of stone: some say, the destroying spirits also, and the sepulchre of Moses (24), and the ram of Abraham our father (25); and others say, tongs, also, made with ...
— Pirke Avot - Sayings of the Jewish Fathers • Traditional Text
... above, painted in fresco. The walls of the room were usually painted too. There was generally a small and very coarse carpet under the table, and sometimes one before the fireplace. The doors were massive; and the locks and hinges upon them, and also the andirons and the shovel and tongs, were of the most ancient and curious construction. The first thing which the children did, on being ushered into one of these old halls, was to walk all about, and examine these various objects in detail. Rollo made drawings of a great many of them in his drawing ...
— Rollo in Naples • Jacob Abbott
... margin-grass is group'd with cows, and spotted with the geese; On the dew-wet green by the smithy, there's a circle of crackling fire, Hurrah! how it blazes and curls around the coal-man's welded tire! While o'er it, with tongs, are the smith and his man, to fit it when cherry-red, To the tilted wheel of the huge grim'd ark in ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... moustache and wax the tips, Harry," she said, when she had recovered sufficiently well to be able to speak. "Curl your hair with tongs and take dancing lessons from a tango lizard or go in for a course of sotto voce sayings from a French portrait painter, but you'd still remain the Nice Boy. That's why I like you. You're as refreshing and ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... will, and as the work requir'd. The stubborn brass, and tin, and precious gold, And silver, first he melted in the fire, Then on its stand his weighty anvil plac'd; And with one hand the hammer's pond'rous weight He wielded, while the other grasp'd the tongs. ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... he lazily droned, 'forgot it. Attractions, you know,' and, as she brought the cup to the window, with a lump of sugar in the tongs, 'when sugar fingers are—' and the speech ended in a demonstration at the fingers that made Ida laugh, blush, and say, 'Oh, for ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... I'll do," ejaculated the bully, at length, and he started immediately across the field, his long legs working like a pair of tongs in his haste ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... wood and gives out more heat than a deeper one. A false back of brick may be put up in a deep fireplace. Hooks for holding up the shovel and tongs, a hearth-brush and bellows, and brass knobs to hang them on, should be furnished to every fireplace. An iron bar across the andirons aids in keeping the fire safe and in good order. Steel furniture ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... was right," replied old Wilders. "Only it can't be put off much longer. Unless I am greatly mistaken, to-morrow we shall be at it hammer and tongs." ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... at it once more, "hammer-and-tongs." Thus far no one had been injured seriously enough to more than delay the game a few minutes, and, before the fatal seven had expired, the fellow who had been hurt was able to take his place in the line; so no substitutes ...
— The Chums of Scranton High at Ice Hockey • Donald Ferguson
... with such horrible cries, even as it had been a Divill or some tormented soul in hell...and though he deserved ten times more, yet humane nature might inforce us to pity his distress. After this with tongs and iron pincers made extreme hot in the same furnace, the executioners pinched and seared his breasts, his arms, and thighs and other fleshy parts of his body, cutting out collops of flesh and burned them before ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... the relics, the spinning-wheel, the flax-hackle, and the bunch of dusty tow that nobody knows how to spin in these degenerate days; the old flint-lock rifle, and the powder-horn; the tinder-box, and the blue plate, "more'n a hundred years old;" the dog-irons, tongs, poker, and turkey-wing of an ancient fireplace—around back of the Old Settlers' Cabin all the early part of the day a bunch of dirty canvas has been dangling from a rope stretched between two trees. It was fenced off from the curious, but after dinner a stranger in fringy trousers and a black singlet ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... happy moment up in the ward when Polly opened her box of candy. Such chocolates, such candied cherries and strawberries, with tiny tongs to lift them with, the children had never seen. They chose one apiece all round, which Miss Lucy said was enough for that day, and Polly carried the box down to the Doctor's office, that he might taste her sweets. It never occurred to her that she ...
— Polly of the Hospital Staff • Emma C. Dowd
... He was without any beauty, even without the beauty of ugliness. He was ugly, that was all; nothing more nor less; in short, he was uglily ugly. He was not humpbacked, nor knock-kneed, nor pot-bellied; his legs were not like a pair of tongs, and his arms were neither too long nor too short, and yet, there was an utter lack of uniformity about him, not only in painters' eyes, but also in everybody's, for nobody could meet him in the street ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... other religious or reformatory enterprise. These outside activities were no hindrances to either pulpit or pastoral work; and, like that famous English preacher who felt that he could not have too many irons in the fire, I thrust in tongs, shovel, poker and all. The contact with busy life and benevolent labors among the poor supplied material for sermons; for the pastor of a city church must touch life at a great many points. Our domestic experiences in early housekeeping were very agreeable. The ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... the subject," John interrupted. "Let us cultivate sequence in our ideas. What I am labouring with hammer and tongs to drag from you is the exact date at which, somewhere between the years of our salvation 1387 and 1455, you sat for your portrait to the beatified painter Giovanni of Fiesole. Now, be a duck, and make ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... sympathetic, so kind, so full of love, that it clutched my breast like red-hot tongs and I began ...
— Venus in Furs • Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
... was the first member of a British Cabinet who ever went to the United States while he held office. The great governments of the English-speaking folk have surely dealt with one another with mighty elongated tongs. Governments of democracies are not exactly instruments of precision. But they are at least human. But personal and human neglect of one another by these two governments over so long a period is an astonishing fact in our history. The wonder is that we haven't had more than ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... when Dinah brought in the tea, she found a wholly new element in the atmosphere, and missed the customary sharp rebuke from her mother's lips when she had to go back for the sugar-tongs. ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... go with you," said Mr. Glanbally, — "but I've been riding till I'm as stiff as the tongs — Winthrop, are you too tired to walk home with this young lady? — as her father has brought you a letter you might do ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... been struck out of the anvil, valuable possessions raised by the tongs, and superb houses, in a two-fold sense, ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... kill him, Willis; don't you dare to kill him. Take him up with the tongs and fling him out of ...
— Evening Dress - Farce • W. D. Howells
... small axe with long narrow blade for working camphor out of the heart of the camphor-tree. Besides these essential tools and weapons, which he constantly carries, the family possesses sago-mallets and sieves, dishes and spoons or spatulas of hard wood, and tongs of bamboo for eating sago,[176] a few iron pots,[177] large baskets for carrying on the back, a few mats of plaited rattan, ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... like cupping glasses claspe, Let our tongs meete and siriue as they would sting, Crush out my winde with one strait girting graspe, Stabs on my heart keepe time whitest ...
— The Vnfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton - With An Essay On The Life And Writings Of Thomas Nash By Edmund Gosse • Thomas Nash
... floor, about two feet from the ground, there is a broad ledge of polished wood on which you sit down. A woman everlastingly boiling water on a bronze hibachi, or brazier, shifting the embers about deftly with brass tongs like chopsticks, and with a baby looking calmly over her shoulders, is the shopwoman; but she remains indifferent till she imagines that you have a definite purpose of buying, when she comes forward ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... determined to seek glory in the land of the Amelungs.[163] Wieland would fain have had him stay in the smithy and learn his own wealth-bringing craft; but Witig swore by the honour of his mother, a king's daughter, that never should the smith's hammer and tongs come into his hand. Thereupon Wieland gave him a coat of mail of hard steel, which shone like silver, and greaves of chain-armour; a white shield, on which were painted in red the smith's hammer and tongs, telling of his father's trade, and three carbuncles, which he bore in right of the princess, ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... stretched out his hands towards the throne in mute appeal. Thereupon one of the Seraphim flew to the Altar and, with a pair of tongs, took from it a live coal. From the Altar the Seraph flew directly to Isaiah and, touching his mouth with ...
— Stories of the Prophets - (Before the Exile) • Isaac Landman
... of our morning's walk, we stopped at a small house belonging to one of the laborers on the estate. The object of Scott's visit was to inspect a relic which had been digged up in a Roman camp, and which, if I recollect right, he pronounced to have been a tongs. It was produced by the cottager's wife, a ruddy, healthy-looking dame, whom Scott addressed by the name of Ailie. As he stood regarding the relic, turning it round and round, and making comments upon it, ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... that in a former day they had been dragged in by a horse, who drew them right up to the wide stone hearth. But we did not use Lord Beaconsfield for this work. For one thing, he would have been too big to get through the door; besides, we were strong, and liked the job. We had two pairs of ice-tongs, and we would put on our rubber boots, and take the tongs, and go out into the snow, and fasten to a log—one at each end—and drag it across Captain Ben's iron door-sill, and lift it in and swing it across ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... distilling retort had been laboriously formed from sheet copper and clumsily riveted together. It leaked mightily as did the soldered seams on the hand-formed pipe. Most of the tools were blacksmith's tongs and hammers for heating and beating out shapes on the anvil. The only things that gladdened Jason's heart were the massive drill press and lathe that worked off the slave-power drive belts. In the tool ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey
... relation—by marriage. The worst of it was that she was not dressed for the theater. The gown she wore was exquisite in its place, but it was dull and informal and it gave her no help in the ordeal she was suddenly submitted to. Her hair had not been coiffed by the high-elbowed artist with the waving-tongs. Her brains were not marceled for a beauty-contest with her rival. She was at her worst and ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... cry or to cheer. The fight did not last long. Bob was the taller, but Frank the stouter of the two. Bob, like most bullies, was a coward, but Frank was as plucky as he was strong. Burning with righteous wrath, Frank went at his opponent hammer and tongs, and after a few minutes' ineffective parrying and dodging, the latter actually ran out of the ring, thoroughly beaten, leaving Frank in possession of the field, to receive the applause of his companions, and particularly of Bert, who gave him ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... known. The watchers had left the corpse alone, and were dining in the adjoining room, when a terrible noise was heard in the chamber of death. None dared enter; the minister was sent for, and passed into the room. He emerged, asked for a pair of tongs, and returned, bearing in the tongs A BLOODY GLOVE, and the noise ceased. He always declined to say what he had witnessed. Ministers were exorcists in the last century, and the father of James Thomson, the poet, died suddenly in ...
— A Collection of Ballads • Andrew Lang
... looking him in the face, says, "Dreadfully pale is this man;" and asks to see his wounds. She examines his wound in his side, and feels that the iron of the arrow is still there; she then takes a pair of tongs and tries to pull it out, "but it sat too fast, and as the wound was swelled, little of it stood out to lay hold of." Thormod bids her "cut deep enough to reach the iron, and then to give him the tongs, and let him pull." ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... as not to forget that she must remain fasting. She slowly pulled on her new stockings and stretched out her hand to the bench on which the white slippers lay. She took off her sleeping-jacket and her little skirt and stood waiting in her shift. When the tongs were well warmed, Mam'selle Julie seized the little paper twists in the hot iron and opened them out. From each fold a curled tress came rolling down; and at last, combed out and bound up with blue-silk ribbon, it all stood ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... for the shore, closely pursued by one of the ship's boats. Cook, King, and a marine ran to intercept them, but were too late, as the occupants of the canoe landed before they could reach the spot. Burney says the disturbance commenced by a native stealing a pair of carpenter's tongs, jumping overboard with them, and placing them in a canoe which at once paddled off. The thief was caught, flogged, and put in irons till the tongs were returned from the shore. The same tongs were again stolen in ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson
... of which the rim was composed. While Marco was looking at the wheel, the blacksmith began to push away the burning brands a little from the tire, as it began to be hot enough. Presently he went into his shop and brought out several pairs of tongs. With these the men lifted the tire out of the fire, but the blacksmith said it was a little too hot, and he must let it cool a minute ...
— Marco Paul's Voyages and Travels; Vermont • Jacob Abbott
... bottle of acid on the shelf and picked up a pair of tongs. As he raised the cover of the glowing crucible a sudden transformation took place. The upper part of the laboratory blazed out fiercely, and in this light Pierre moved with gesticulating arms, the lower part of his body wholly hidden. He lifted the crucible, shook it for a moment with an oscillatory ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... wait, then take us from there to the South Station. Meanwhile we'll make sure that the little blue room is all ready for her. I put in my white enamel work-basket yesterday, and that pretty little blue case for hairpins and curling tongs that I bought at the fair. I want the room to look homey to ...
— Miss Billy's Decision • Eleanor H. Porter
... old city employed themselves, and how skilful they were in craftsmanship. Amongst other things we find axes, chisels, files for setting saws, hammers, a large plane, and other carpenters' tools; an anvil, a pair of tongs, and blacksmiths' implements; shoemakers' anvils, very similar to those used in our day, a large gridiron, a standing lamp, safety-pins, such as ladies use now, and many other useful ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... entered his house, and threw himself into a seat, but he sat only a moment. Something seemed to be wanting. A restless impatience possessed him. He took up the tongs and begun to alter the disposition of the sticks of wood. He could not suit himself, and finally abandoned the fire to itself, after having filled the room with smoke. He went to the bookcase, and took down a book, and commenced reading. But presently his eyes ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... nearly opposite the entrance to the old Cafe Flamm and leads, or led, to the low Greek quarter. Anyhow, there is a sloping street there which runs down by a flight of rough stone steps towards the Galata district, and from this a fierce crowd came swarming, armed with broom-handles, knives, pokers, tongs—any weapon snatched up in the vengeful tide of the moment. Poor Campbell took command of our party, formed us in line, and made us draw our revolvers. The entrance to the cafe was wide enough to allow us to issue shoulder to shoulder in a sort of bow. We ranged ourselves along ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray
... Punch's calendar for the acquisition of Mr. Linley Sambourne; but an earlier arrival was Mr. Frederic Shields. Mr. Swain suggested that he should "do a letter or two"; Mr. Shields did three, including a "social" ("Want your door swep', marm?"), and a girl curling her hair with the fender-tongs. The initials were kept over until 1870; and this constituted the sum of Mr. Shields' artistic adventure ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... employment; he erects his shop before the house of his employer, raising a low wall with beaten earth; before which, he places his hearth; behind this wall, he fixes two leathern bellows. He has a stone instead of an anvil, and his whole apparatus is a pair of tongs, a hammer, a beetle, and a file. How exactly does this accord with the description of the ...
— A Historical Survey of the Customs, Habits, & Present State of the Gypsies • John Hoyland
... should see his way further cleared. Then the apparition, who the whole time spoke none, took an effectual way to raise the doctor. He carried back the candles to the table and went to the fire, and with the tongs took down the kindled coals, and laid them on the deal chamber floor. The doctor then thought it time to rise and put on his clothes, in the time of which the spectre laid up the coals again in the chimney, and, going to the table, lifted the candles and went to the door, opened it, still ...
— Greek and Roman Ghost Stories • Lacy Collison-Morley
... stretched, and rubbing against the tongs, knocked them down with a clatter. Pennington awoke. Louise was beside him in a moment. "Ah, it's you, ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... hand-painted fans? What an interesting fact!" She sits down on the sofa behind the little table on which the maid arranges the tea, and pours out a cup. Then, with her eyes on Mr. Bemis: "Cream and sugar both? Yes?" Holding a cube of sugar in the tongs: ...
— Five O'Clock Tea - Farce • W. D. Howells
... down into the room. The woman clasped her hands, at which the Duckling flew down into the butter-tub, and then into the meal-barrel and out again. How it looked then! The woman screamed, and struck at it with the fire-tongs; the children tumbled over one another in their efforts to catch the Duckling; and they laughed and they screamed!—well it was that the door stood open, and the poor creature was able to slip out ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... in my ear, and I nod assent. Now the hot stones are removed with bamboo tongs, and the great flat object, wrapped in banana leaves, is taken out. Mrs. Agelan throws back the leaves and uncovers the beautifully cooked golden lap-lap. Her lord looks at it critically, and returns to his corner silent, but evidently ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... tumbling in brazen confusion on the red-brick hearth. When my Uncle Peter has mounted his favourite metaphysical theory, I know that nothing can make him dismount but physical violence. I apologized for the poker and the shovel and the tongs (practising a Stevensonian omission in regard to my own share in the catastrophe), arranged the offending members in their proper station on the left of the fire-place, and took the bellows to encourage the dull fire ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... across country to one of the fords on the Schuylkill, or out from town by the Ridge or the Germantown highroad. The ride was long, but, with my saddle-bags and Lucy, a new mare my aunt had raised and given me, and clad in overalls, which we called tongs, I cared little for the mud, and often enough stopped to assist a chaise out of the deep holes, which made ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell |
