"Chopping" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... remain with her and do the cooking and the housework. So the old woman went to the Wicked Witch of the East, and promised her two sheep and a cow if she would prevent the marriage. Thereupon the Wicked Witch enchanted my axe, and when I was chopping away at my best one day, for I was anxious to get the new house and my wife as soon as possible, the axe slipped all at once and cut off my ...
— The Wonderful Wizard of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... his new friends. The master's sharp eyes noted that the prescribed ablutions seemed both pleasant and familiar to the new boy, and the superintendent of the wood-chopping department expressed his opinion that Jan's intelligence and dexterity were wasted among the fagots, and that his vocation was to be a brushmaker at ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... but 'twas done by what is called a "frolic." When people have a particular kind of work requiring to be done quickly, and strength to accomplish it, they invite their neighbours to come, and, if necessary, bring with them their horses or oxen. Frolics are used for building log huts, chopping, piling, ploughing, planting, and hoeing. The ladies also have their particular frolics, such as wool-picking, or cutting out and making the home-spun woollen clothes for winter. The entertainment given on such occasions ...
— Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan
... woods up among the hills not very far from his home. It was a fine day in the early autumn, and the old man enjoyed the fresh air and was in no hurry to get home. So the whole afternoon passed quickly while he was chopping wood, and he had collected a goodly pile to take back to his wife. When the day began to draw to a close, ...
— Japanese Fairy Tales • Yei Theodora Ozaki
... remember as a child chopping up hay—" she spoke much more quickly than usual, and kept her eye fixed upon Mrs. Thornbury, "and pretending it was tea, and getting scolded by the nurses—why I can't imagine, except that nurses are such brutes, won't allow pepper instead of salt ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... steady employment, as wood-chopping at fifty cents a cord, and a camp in the woods, will not be a good subject for Christianity. The New Testament may be a choice book to him on some, but not on all or most of his days. He will rather go a-fishing in his leisure hours. The Apostles, though they were fishers too, were of the solemn ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... an hour and a half—taking their turns at chopping—almost without speaking. At length the top of the tree began to waver, and a loud crack announced that it was about to fall. Frank and Archie were chopping, and the blows of their axes resounded with redoubled force, and ...
— Frank, the Young Naturalist • Harry Castlemon
... down to write an article about a log-chopping competition. But the irony of writing such things with other things on one's mind is too much even for a war correspondent. One's pen goes on strike. One impression above all has been brought home in the two months we have spent in France. For some reason, people at home are colossally ...
— Letters from France • C. E. W. Bean
... their hands, and the bear followed them lumberingly out through the gate. Francesca lingered a moment, then caught up a stick from within the enclosure, where Jan had been lately chopping. She wrapped it hastily in her shawl, and went off with a long, ...
— The Golden House • Mrs. Woods Baker
... being cured, or ever being fit to be married. He had bought a piece of land, in common with Arie, his brother-in-law, to make tillable land out of the rough woods. It was to him like dead fruit. He worked on it three times as much as the other did, in felling and chopping trees, and making the best of it into timber, which was carried to the city with little or no profit to him, but to the people to whom Arie was indebted. Differences arose between them as to the land and labor, and it was therefore proposed to divide it, and separate; ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... and shaped like an awl, that is, a little concave, to give the barbs effect. After about a mile of still water, we prepared our camp on the right side, just at the foot of a considerable fall. Little chopping was done that night, for fear of scaring the moose. We had moose- meat fried for supper. It tasted like tender beef, with perhaps more flavor,—sometimes ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... himself about the ankle when chopping a week earlier, and though the wound had partly healed his foot was still painful. There were also a good many other scars and bruises upon his body, for the cost of building a western railroad is usually heavy. Still, he had an excellent constitution, and was, while not particularly ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... it involves much restatement of traditional notions. This is a kind of intellectual product that never attains a classic form of expression when first promulgated. The critic ought therefore not to be too sharp and logic-chopping in his dealings with it, but should weigh it as a whole, and especially weigh it against its possible alternatives. One should also try to apply it first to one instance, and then to another to see how it will ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... of the grand evils of questions of casuistry of this kind, that men, instead of looking at things and estimating them as they really exist, are contented to play games at logic—chopping with but the imperfect signs of things—mere verbal counters, twisted from their original meanings by the influence of delusive metaphors and ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... Bobby began chopping off as large pieces as he thought he could conveniently handle. The ice was exceedingly hard and brittle. It had frozen centuries before, under the extremely low temperatures of the Arctic regions. It had its beginning, perhaps, in snow deposited in some far-off Greenland valley. Other ...
— Bobby of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... was the matter, and brought me nearer to the family lodge, and bade me help her in making a small lodge of branches of the spruce tree. She told me to remain there, and keep away from every one, and as a diversion, to keep myself employed in chopping wood, and that she would bring me plenty of prepared bass-wood bark to twist into twine. She told me she would come to see me, in two days, and that in the mean time I must not ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... which Bob now turned his attention did not prove to be a very serious obstacle. It was made of heavy planks, and if it had been in good condition it would have taken a good deal of chopping with a sharp axe before one could have forced his way through it; but the hinges had rusted off, and the planks had shrunk to such a degree that the bar which held the door in its place could be seen and reached with a sabre. A few blows with one of these ...
— George at the Fort - Life Among the Soldiers • Harry Castlemon
... end," said Josette, glancing at the valet and mounting a stool to take down a copper kettle that shone like gold. "There's no mother could stand quietly by and see a father amusing himself by chopping up a fortune like ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... life." "But," said I, "if he doesn't intend to hang somebody, why should he rave about hemp all night?" "Oh, he is a rope-maker. He is going to Russia to buy a cargo of hemp, and he's afraid prices will go up unless he gets there soon. The head wind and chopping sea keep us back a good deal." "Yes, yes, I understand it all now. Suppose, my young friend, you and I go to work and help the steamer along a little? It would be doing a great service to the cause of hemp, and enable me to sleep besides." The Mechlenberger ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... were out chopping wood, and Canker danced in among the few remaining, loading them with bedding belonging to their fellows until every item of clothing and furniture was shoved out of the room. One member of the Board and one only failed to enter with his associates—a veteran ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... prior to the incident quoted below, Annatock had discovered a walrus frozen to death and was engaged in chopping him up. Then appears walrus number two, who ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... scene, please. Don't you know it's a question of your life, of your future? Come, quick! [Snatches the bird away from her, carries it to the chopping block and picks up an axe. MISS JULIA ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... three of the sloops continued exchanging fire over a narrow tongue of land with the vessels of the enemy, consisting of one brig and six armed sloops, mounted with great guns and swivels. At length the channel being discovered, and the wind, which generally blows down the river, chopping about, captain Millar, of the London buss, seized that opportunity; and, passing the bar with a flowing sheet, dropped anchor on the inside, where he lay till night exposed to the whole fire of the enemy. Next day he was joined by the other ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... cast by the graveyard wall, heavily buttressed against avalanches, a form wriggled out into the moonlight and fell with a dusty thud at my feet, mowing and chopping at the air with its aimless claws. I started back with a sudden jerk of my pulses. The thing was horrible by reason of its inarticulate voice, which issued from the shapeless folds of its writhings like the wet gutturizing of a back-broken horse. Instinct ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... hickory from a great pile in the yard. It was a relief to his pent-up feelings, and he drove the axe home with powerful blows. He was a strong, handsome youth, with face and arms healthily bronzed with work in the open air. He laid a big junk of the oak across the chopping-block, swung the axe, and cleft the stick with a single blow that sent the ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... behind it the Rughmat Makn, the greenish-yellow, flat-backed "horse" of Madyan, which, shimmering in the sunset with a pearly lustre, forms the best of landmarks. Finish to the south of the Wady with the quaint chopping outlines of the Jebel el-Fahst, resembling from afar a huge alligator lying on the water; with the similar but lower forms to the north of the valley, both reflected in the Jibl el-Hamr (the Red Hills), whose curtains of green-black trap are ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... from where he was chopping wood off in the trees, and together they got him into the house. It was days before he so much ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... busy looking after the land: I am making new avenues, planting flowers, chopping down dead trees, and chasing the hens and the dogs out of the garden. Literature plays the part of Erakit, who was always in the background. I don't want to write, and indeed, it's hard to combine a desire to live and a desire ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... may devote herself to the work of putting away the meat which is of so much importance for the coming year, while some are cutting up the fat to render into lard, others may be employed in assorting the sausage meat, and cutting it into small pieces for the chopping machine, by trimming off every part that can be spared. You can have one hundred pounds of sausage from twelve hundred weight of pork, and since the introduction of sausage choppers, a great deal more sausage is made, than formerly, by the old method. Clean a few of the maws, and ...
— Domestic Cookery, Useful Receipts, and Hints to Young Housekeepers • Elizabeth E. Lea
... he was young. He came from the tall meadows out West straight to the University here. How he got the educational ambition I haven't the remotest idea; somehow he got it and somehow he came. It must have been a rub to make it. He's mentioned times of working on a farm, of chopping ties in Missouri, of heaving coal in a bituminous mine in Iowa, of—I don't know what all. And still he was only a boy when I first saw him; a great, big, over-aged boy with a big chin and bigger hands. The peculiar part is that he wasn't awkward and never has been. Even when he first ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge
... year, they sailed down the Murray, proving its confluence with the Darling, and on down the united streams of the Murray and Darling with boundless flats on each side. The river widened day by day; the flight of sea-gulls, and the chopping sea caused by the wind, surely showed they were near the ocean. Still, Sturt had reached his goal—the Murray ended in a lake. They had hoped that succour would have waited them, had the ocean been reached. Now they must re-enter the Murray while the weary party had still strength to face each ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... Galerie is named after its proprietor, M. Vero Dodat, an opulent charcutier, (a pork-butcher) in the neighbouring street; but we are unable to inform the reader by how many horse power his sausage-chopping ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 541, Saturday, April 7, 1832 • Various
... shelter of the verandah, a saddle is standing on end, while a bridle hangs from a peg in the wall overhead. A heap of two-foot logs is near the water-tanks, with a short-handled axe stuck in an upturned stump which does duty for a chopping-block. ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... indiscriminately among themselves until the voices of their human companions were almost drowned in the tumult. A full pound of the meat was given to each dog, and other pieces of it were suspended over beds of coals drawn out from the big fire. Meanwhile Rod was chopping through the thick ice of the ...
— The Gold Hunters - A Story of Life and Adventure in the Hudson Bay Wilds • James Oliver Curwood
... one-half pounds raw beef, or a mixture of beef and veal may be used, run through a food chopper. A cheap cut of meat may be used if, before chopping, all pieces of gristle are trimmed off. Place the chopped meat in a bowl, add 8 tablespoonfuls of fine, dried bread crumbs, 1 tablespoonful of pepper, 1-1/2 tablespoonfuls of salt. Taste the meat before ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas
... {imation} or cloak loosely wrapped round him; as he sprang to his feet he would throw it off, or it would fall off, and with the simple inner covering of the {khiton} to protect him, and arms free, he fell to chopping the wood, only ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon
... industriously chopping kindling wood when he got back home again. The young fireman went into the house, explained his new employment to his mother, and ...
— Ralph on the Engine - The Young Fireman of the Limited Mail • Allen Chapman
... licked when swearing; they are despatched with messengers as a hint to enforce obedience; and they are held, after a fashion, to be holy. I have never seen more conventional, distorted, and useless weapons. Three blades showed the usual chopping-bill shape, pierced, like fish-slicers, with round, semicircular, and angular holes. One, measuring twenty-three inches and three-quarters, was leaf-formed, dotted with a lozenge-pattern and set with copper studs. Another was partially saw-toothed. All were of iron, rusty with ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... that they run through different canals and strainers in them, seems to me to be a very strange and unaccountable opinion. For the moisture mixes with the dry food, and by the assistance of the natural heat and spirits cuts the nourishment far smaller than any cleaver or chopping-knife, to the end that every part of it may be exactly fitted to each part of the body, not applied, as they would have it, to little vessels and pores, but united and incorporated with the whole substance. And unless the thing were ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... assault on Hilgard crept slowly and carefully out of the long furrows. The front ranks carried mattresses, straw-bags, planks and sacks of earth to bridge the barbed wire barricades in case they should not succeed in chopping down the posts to which the wires were fastened. A few American batteries behind La Grande began firing. The other side ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... the other girls laughed at him. But this was not altogether a good sign. When a girl really loves, she does not talk, she acts. The current of opinion and gossip in the village was too strong for her. By the time of the affair of the "chopping-down" at Lac des Caps, her heart was swinging to and fro like a pendulum. One week she would walk home from mass with Raoul. The next week she would loiter in the front yard on a Saturday evening and talk over the gate ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... straining his neck to get a view of the Stage, and then towards the noisy inhabitants of the upper regions. "We dined at the Hummums," said a finicking little Gentleman just below him—"Bill, and I, and Harry—drank claret like fishes—Harry was half-sprung—fell out with a Parson about chopping logic; you know Harry's father was a butcher, and used to chopping, so it was all prime—the Parson would'n't be convinced, though Harry knock'd down his argument with his knuckles on the table, almost ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... a continuous roar under an irresistible impulse. When they got to the top of the stairs, they were scattered, and their chant died away. Nothing could any longer be heard but the tramp of all the shoes intermingled with the chopping sound of many voices. The crowd not being in a mischievous mood, contented themselves with looking about them. But, from time to time, an elbow, by pressing too hard, broke through a pane of glass, or else a vase or a statue rolled from a bracket down on the floor. The wainscotings ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... their homes, believing they would have a better chance for safety there than elsewhere. Water and food were supplied them. Hundreds of others had left their homes, in some instances effecting exits by chopping holes through the roofs. Very few of ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall
... to get over it and reach the French current in time. It proved to be a terrible struggle. The sea here was foaming and tumbling about in a fearful way for the voyager. It was not a regular roll or swell, but short, quick, chopping waves, tumbling about in all directions, that whirled him round and round, rolled him over and over, rendered his puny sail utterly useless and blinded him with foam and spray. It was a strangely fascinating ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... the enticing of the flies and the nourishment of the maggots have been various. Stale meat from the markets has been perhaps the leading article, but we have also used such parts of the butcher's offal and of the horse carcasses as were not well adapted to chopping; fish, fresh dried or pickled; fish pomace from herring-oil works, and any animal ...
— New England Salmon Hatcheries and Salmon Fisheries in the Late 19th Century • Various
... resistance to wear. It can be used anywhere that amalgam can, and with more certainty of non-leakage, and it has the additional advantage that it can be finished at the same sitting. Care is necessary in manipulating it, so as to avoid chopping. I use hand pressure when filling, and the mallet to condense the surface." (Dr. A. W. Harlan, Independent ...
— Tin Foil and Its Combinations for Filling Teeth • Henry L. Ambler
... them just after the War, and I know they didn't before the War—not in my part of Alabama. That's the reason why they say the Negro is cold natured. He didn't have anything on. I have seen many a boy picking and chopping cotton on a cold autumn day with nothing on but his shirt. In his bare feet too. He got one pair of shoes a year and he didn't get no more. When he wore them out, he didn't have ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Arkansas Narratives Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... not to make a scene. Your welfare, your life, is at stake. So—quickly. [Snatches bird from her and goes to chopping block and takes up meat chopper]. You should have learned how to chop off a chicken's head instead of shooting with a revolver. [He chops off the bird's head]. Then you wouldn't swoon ...
— Plays: The Father; Countess Julie; The Outlaw; The Stronger • August Strindberg
... send labouring children to school; they were ruined when inspectors were appointed to look into their works; they were ruined, when such inspectors considered it doubtful whether they were quite justified in chopping people up with their machinery; they were utterly undone, when it was hinted that perhaps they need not always make quite so much smoke. Besides Mr. Bounderby's gold spoon which was generally received in Coketown, another ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... the young king thought so too; but it was better to lose his hair than his head. So, I suppose, the men told him; for he suffered them to cut it all close to his head, laying down his head on a rough deal table, or a chopping-block, while his faithful friends with a large knife ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... Returning home at night very tired, he said to his father, "I have been to the village." "Yes," said the Brahman, "you went thither without an object, and have done no good by it."—And in the Buddhist Jatakas we find what is probably the original of a world-wide story: A man was chopping a felled tree, when a mosquito settled on his bald head and stung him severely. Calling to his son, who was sitting near him, he said, "My boy, there is a mosquito stinging my head, like the thrust of a spear—drive it off." "Wait ...
— The Book of Noodles - Stories Of Simpletons; Or, Fools And Their Follies • W. A. Clouston
... they should have been, yet that there was absolute rest, peace, and protection in their presence compared with what it was to be alone with Freiherrinn Kunigunde and her rude women without them. A few sneers on her daintiness and uselessness had led her to make an offer of assisting in the grand chopping of sausage meat and preparation of winter stores, and she had been answered with contempt that my young lord would not have her soil her delicate hands, when one of the maids who had been sent to ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... plane away from before the trap, and looked at the hole to see whether Frink had gnawed it any bigger. He had not. Phonny then carried the trap to the back side of the shop and put it upon a great chopping-block which stood there. He did this for the purpose of having the bench clear, so as to put the tools in ...
— Stuyvesant - A Franconia Story • Jacob Abbott
... the same level with a red-hot knife, if you will, like Fabricius Hildanus; by a single blow with a chisel and mallet, like Scultetus; or by a crushing guillotine, like Purmannus: or by two butchers' chopping-knives fixed in heavy blocks of wood, one fixed, the other falling in a grove, like Botal; and then try to check the bleeding by tying a pig's bladder over the face of the stump, like Hans de Gersdorf; or tying it up in the inside of a hen ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell
... miraculous draught from the great ocean of London streets, whom I saw all comfortably bedded in one spacious dormitory. Downstairs were the implements and products of the day's work, dozens of miniature cobblers' appliances, machines for sawing and chopping firewood, &c., whilst, in a spacious refectory on the first floor, I was informed, the resident Arabs extended on a Friday their accustomed hospitality to other tribes, to such an extent, that the party numbered about ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... with more or less of it in exchange for the shoes—it is these two conditions, alone, which prevent the shoemaker from having consumed his capital unproductively, just as much as if he had spent his time in chopping up ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... space of uneven ground crossed and recrossed by the narrow-gauge tracks upon which the sand and grit trucks ran, avoiding one or two localities where steam shot upward from the ground in a witch-like and erratic manner, with short angry hisses and chopping sounds that suggested danger, and finally stood before the door designated "OFFICE" in plain lettering. Joyce looked around at her companion with a ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... were the least part of the pleasure. For the time being, the silent Reach forest had become the hub of our little universe. All was life and bustle and movement there. Every day fresh trees were felled and chopping contests entered into by Johnny and the Dandy; and as the trees fell in quick succession, black boys and lubras armed with tomahawks, swarmed over them, to lop away the branches, before the trunks were dragged ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... box, always standing on the table at the side of his bed, and having frequently heerd tell of the Temple as a spot where lawyer's dust is contracted for, I come down here in search of a lawyer to advise, and I see your young man up at this present elevation, chopping at the flies on the window-sill with his penknife, and I give him a Hoy! not then having the pleasure of your acquaintance, and by that means come to gain the honour. Then you, and the gentleman in the uncomfortable ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... both uncovered. Toral was well-looking, his face rather red from the sun and half hidden by a fine gray mustache. He was a little bald and his forehead was high and round. As the two Generals shook hands it was so still that the noise of a man chopping wood in our lines nearly half a mile away was plainly audible. Immediately at their backs the staffs of the two watched. The escort watched. Back along the Spanish and the American trenches thousands of men stood in line and watched; Santiago watched, and Washington, Spain ...
— The Surrender of Santiago - An Account of the Historic Surrender of Santiago to General - Shafter, July 17, 1898 • Frank Norris
... were different in those days; we're more advanced now. There's nothing refined about swinging sabers around your head like a windmill and chopping off Yankee arms and legs; nor is there anything especially artistic in two gentlemen meeting at dawn under the oaks with shotguns loaded with scrap iron." Mr. Dreux shuddered. "I'm tremendously glad the war is over and duels are ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... face, and a rope and a whip—symbols of his success with horses—dangled in his right hand, while behind him followed the smart war-pony, covered with vermilion hand-prints as thickly as the spots on a brook-trout. The squaws ran from their fleshing, their chopping or their other work to look at the warrior who made all the camp talk. Wisdom mellowed by age, in the forms of certain old men, sat back and thought disturbedly of the future, as is the wont of those who have little ...
— The Way of an Indian • Frederic Remington
... further hindrance to their progress. The sound of chopping grew louder, and a little later the sled turned into a clearing, about which were strewn many big, fallen trees. Mr. Ford's eyes sparkled at ...
— The Outdoor Girls in a Winter Camp - Glorious Days on Skates and Ice Boats • Laura Lee Hope
... were got up from below; the sailors worked like beavers, waist-deep in water; one, who had lost his knife, tore at the ropes with his teeth. After some minutes of reeling, splashing, chopping, and cutting, the fallen mast, the friend who had become an enemy, the angel who had become a demon, was sent drifting through the creamy foam to leeward. Meantime the mate had sounded the pumps, and brought out of them a clear stream of water, the ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... extremity that he lost his wits, and became the sport of the whole court at Rome, and was sent back, as a lesser evil, as a confirmed madman to Florence.' Varchi proceeds to relate how Lorenzino fell into disfavour with the Pope and the Romans by chopping the heads off statues from the arch of Constantine and other monuments; for which act of vandalism Molsa impeached him in the Roman Academy, and a price was set upon his head. Having returned to Florence, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... all right," and the man pointed to his leg. "The trouble is that I've very little wood. Axe slipped the last time I went chopping in the bluff, and the frost got into the cut. I couldn't make three miles on one leg, and pack a load of ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... city. Enemy artillery would empty the city of inhabitants, although his infantry would find it difficult to penetrate the wire and other fortifications erected by the Americans and Russians under the able direction of a British officer, Lieut. Augustine of a Canadian engineer unit. Think of chopping holes in the ice and frozen ground, pouring in water and freezing posts in for wire supports! Then came the unexpected. After six days of steady fighting which added many occupants to our hospital ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... the vicissitudes of fortune, and in after days helped her to support them. It was Rousseau at Charmettes piling up the woodstack of Madame de Warens with the hand which was to write the Contrat Social, or Philopoemen chopping his wood. ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... more like green bushes than frail plants. Bob rode the fields all day long, even when the thermometer crept up to 127 in the shade, and a skillet left in the sun would fry bacon and eggs perfectly done in seven minutes. Often he continued to ride until far into the night, watching the chopping of the weeds, watching the men in the fields, and most of all watching the watering. Yes, the crop was advancing with a promise almost staggering in its richness. It looked now as though some of these fields would go to a bale and a half an acre. And slowly but surely the ...
— The Desert Fiddler • William H. Hamby
... matters, quite alligatorical. The doctor will forgive me, if I mistake, but I think he told me that the monsters in the neighborhood of his plantation had in several instances stolen his butcher-knives and chopping instruments; a fact which he made quite certain, by seeing them use the knives in a family way on the other side of the lagoon; and that on one occasion, he was quite astounded at seeing a large alligator making tracks for the water on three legs, with a pitch-fork and crow-bar in his ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... Chapter on the Corn-Laws, in this place; the Corn-Laws are too mad to have a Chapter. There is a certain immorality, when there is not a necessity, in speaking about things finished; in chopping into small pieces the already slashed and slain. When the brains are out, why does not a Solecism die? It is at its own peril if it refuse to die; it ought to make all conceivable haste to die, and get itself buried! The trade of Anti-Corn-Law Lecturer in these days, still an indispensable, ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... do to growl either. The best thing to do is to pitch in and get through as fast as possible," went on Henry, and then set to chopping with renewed vigor. ...
— On the Trail of Pontiac • Edward Stratemeyer
... a melancholy thing," said he; "but I fear that there can be no doubt that I am dead. If this is the case, however, I have no business to be on my feet, much less to be chopping firewood which I have not lived to require." So he went and ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... half of Mr. Williamson was visible behind his chopping-table. He saw me and touched his hat—a bowler; nothing very extraordinary about the bowler. The brim was certainly a great deal flatter than I like personally, but quite in keeping with the general tastes ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 15, 1914 • Various
... was killed. Early the next morning they put to sea again, and finally found their ship half a league from them at anchor in a bay which furnished them a better anchorage than any they had previously discovered. More days were spent in taking on water, chopping wood, catching fish and killing goats. Terrible storms struck them, and the death of one of their mates made the stay an ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... Hilton by the hair—bent his head and shoulders over the gun-wale, and I could distinctly hear them chopping the bone of the neck. They then wrung his neck, separated the head from the body by a slight draw of the sword, and let it drop into the water;—there was a dying shriek—a convulsive struggle—and all I could discern was the arms dangling over the ...
— Narrative of the shipwreck of the brig Betsey, of Wiscasset, Maine, and murder of five of her crew, by pirates, • Daniel Collins
... we could fell a couple of them in a few minutes; but even if we had them, we should not dare use them, for the chances are that the villagers are forbidden to cut down trees anywhere near the castle, and the sound might bring people up from below to see who was chopping. I was thinking of burning two of them down, but in this dry weather the flames might run up them, and we should get a blaze that would bring all the villagers up here." He beckoned to Osgod, and when he came up told ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... from the house, and seeing us standing there by the chopping-block wasting time in idle talk, she tells Grindhusen he'd better ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... was to clear some twenty acres or so, as a primary clearing, wherein our shanty might be built, and a little grass provided to keep the milch-cows near home. We had two or three weeks chopping, then, in the height of the dry season, managed a successful burn of the fallen stuff, letting the fire run among the standing bush where it would, and which it would not to any great extent, as the undergrowth ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... the furrows, two of the spruce for each dwarf pine till the nurse has done her work. Then she is turned into charcoal, into tar, and a score of other things of use. The men who do the planting in summer find chopping to do in winter in the older plantations, at good wages. Money is flowing into the moor in the wake of the water and the marl. Roads are being made, and every day the mail-carrier comes. In the olden time a stranger straying into the heath ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... disliked. They ranged up one on each side of the stegosaur, who had halted at their approach, stiffened himself, and drawn his head so far back into the loose skin of his neck that only the sharp, chopping beak projected from under the first armor-plate. One of the pair threatened him from the front, as if to engross his attention, while the other pounced upon one of his massive, bowed hind-legs, as if seeking to drag it ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... of 3 years. We have also proposed abolishing almost 500 Federal advisory and other commissions and boards. But I know that the American people are still sick and tired of Federal paperwork and redtape. Bit by bit we are chopping down the thicket of unnecessary Federal regulations by which Government too often interferes in our personal lives and our personal business. We've cut the public's Federal paperwork load by more than 12 percent in less than a year. And we are not ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... the woodshed opening behind he had spanned a keystone arch. Peering into this shed, under the collapsing roof, you see what is left of an axe embedded in a pile of reddish vegetable mould, which was once the chopping block. Peering through the windows of the house, you see a few bits of simple furniture still inhabiting the ruined rooms. Just outside, in the door-yard, the day lilies, run wild in the grass, speak to you of a housewife's ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... in my back room, and soon I heard the chopping of sticks. Presently I heard the crackling of flames, and I knew that a fire had been lit. A dreamy partial unconsciousness destitute of all pain, and not in itself unpleasant, stole over me. I felt my boots cut from my feet. I was gently lifted up. Some of my outer ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... freedmen were engaged in cutting wood along the Mississippi River to supply the large number of steamers on that stream. A good price was paid for chopping wood used for the supply of government steamers (steamers chartered and which the government had to supply with fuel). Those supplying their own fuel paid a much higher price. In this way a fund was created not only sufficient to ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... man knows anything about the whereabouts of Private 1st- class William Grey, report at once, as otherwise we shall have to put him down A. W. O. L. You know what that means?" The lieutenant spoke in short shrill periods, chopping off the ends of his words as if ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... of Heine's saying that we Germans are a methodical nation, to take our thinking first and our revolution second, because the heads that have been used for thinking may be afterwards used for chopping off. But if you chopped off heads first, like the French, they could not be of much use ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... foe was not to be closed with; he did not shift or dodge about, but warded off the blows of his opponent with the greatest sang-froid, always using the guard which I have already described, and putting in, in return, short chopping blows with the swiftness of lightning. In a very few minutes the countenance of the coachman was literally cut to pieces, and several of his teeth were dislodged; at length he gave in; stung with mortification, however, he repented, and asked for another round; it was granted, to his own ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... consecrated life, you'd better leave off dancing, drinking smoking and the movies. I've never been to a movie in my life. When I hear some of the programs colored folks put on the radio sometimes I feel just like going out to the woodshed and getting my axe and chopping up the radio, I do! It's natural and graceful to dance, but it is not natural or good to mill around in a low-minded ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: The Ohio Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... of calf's liver; when cold put it through the chopping machine twice, put it in a mortar with cayenne pepper, salt, nutmeg, mace and black pepper to taste. Line a china mould with very thin slices of fat bacon, then put a layer of cooked veal or chicken, cut in very thin slices, next a layer of the pounded liver, and so on until the ...
— 365 Luncheon Dishes - A Luncheon Dish for Every Day in the Year • Anonymous
... a grove of cocoa-nut trees, passing a number of the people as we passed through, but no one attempted to follow us; and after about a quarter of an hour's walk he led us to a roughly-built palm-thatched shed, where we could hear the sounds of chopping and hammering, and on entering we found, to our surprise, that the shed was far larger than we had expected, and that in it were four men busy at work making a boat similar to one that lay there evidently but ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn
... without abating the vigour of his work. "There's no better out-door fun that I know of," said he, "than chopping down a tree. I couldn't think of missing ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... was very interesting to cross it off with a pudding-stick, and this she let me do myself. Next morning she drained the curd in a cloth over a cheese-basket, and put on a stone to press out the whey. When it was drained dry enough, she let me cut it up in the chopping-tray, and she mixed the two curds together, the green and the white, salted them, and put them in that cunning hoop, and then set the hoop in the cheese-press, turned a crank, and weighed it down with a flatiron. ...
— Aunt Madge's Story • Sophie May
... the shock of tawny hair, jammed Caradoc's chin against the buoy and held him tight with little exertion for himself. Smith swung out as awkwardly as a turkey on a chopping block. The water was level with his lips, but his ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... I caught hold of Abe's axe, and struck the first blow. To my surprise and delight the tree sounded hollow. I repeated the stroke. The sharp axe went crashing inwards. The tree was hollow to the ground; on the side where I had commenced chopping, ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... Delaware in a skiff, through floating ice, with a cocked hat on, and his coat flaps trimmed with buff nankeen stuff, a sort of a male Eliza in "Uncle Tom's Cabin," getting away from the hounds that were chasing her to chew her pants. I was always thinking of George either chopping cherry trees, or standing on a pedestal to have his picture taken, but here at the old farm, with dad to inspire me, I was just mingling with Washington, the planter, the neighbor, telling the negroes where they would get off at if they didn't pick cotton ...
— Peck's Bad Boy Abroad • George W. Peck
... of the upper part of the round of beef. Cut off all the fat, and so trim as to give the piece a regular shape. Put the trimmings in the chopping tray, with a quarter of a pound of boiled salt pork and one pound of lean cooked ham. Chop very fine; then add a speck of cayenne, one teaspoonful of mixed mustard, one of onion juice, one table-spoonful of lemon juice and three eggs. Season the beef with salt and pepper. Spread the mixture ...
— Miss Parloa's New Cook Book • Maria Parloa
... were the other rooms; but the greatest pressure was around the door immediately facing him, the one which gave on the bathroom. In the kitchen on his right, where awhile ago he had been chopping wood under a flood of abuse from Jeannette Marechal, he caught sight of this woman, cowering by the hearth, her filthy apron thrown over her head, and crying—yes! crying for the loathsome creature, who had expiated some ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... be lugged in the rest of the family, fathers, mothers, uncles, cousins, people thousands of miles away, and some of them dead. That Hal's views on art, or the sort of society plays his mother's brother wrote, should have anything to do with the chopping of a few sticks of firewood, passes comprehension; nevertheless the quarrel was as likely to tend in that direction as in the direction of Charles's political prejudices. And that Charles's sister's tale-bearing tongue should ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... "hand me Papin's chopping-board, or give it to that Indian, and let him cut the mixture; they understand it better than ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... regularly to that. The billet is not too safe either. Much German air reconnaissance over us, and heavy firing from both sides during the day. At 6.45 we again prepared a heavy artillery attack, but the infantry made little attempt to go on. We are perhaps the "chopping block", and our "preparations" may be chiefly designed to prevent detachments of troops being sent from ...
— In Flanders Fields and Other Poems - With an Essay in Character, by Sir Andrew Macphail • John McCrae
... chopping had ceased on their approach and as they stood hesitating a strange figure suddenly appeared round the corner of the wretched rookery of a place. The man, who stood facing them, a startled look in his light blue eyes, was apparently about ...
— The Girl Aviators' Sky Cruise • Margaret Burnham
... one of these pictures:— The women chopping prongs from the beam of the antler. Flaker sawing the prongs ...
— The Later Cave-Men • Katharine Elizabeth Dopp
... all the morning, on the 22d, it rained almost continually. The wind was at S.E., S.S.E., and S., which brought in a short, chopping sea; and as there were breakers little more than two cables length from the stern of our ship, her situation was none of the safest. The surf broke so high against the shore, that we could not land in our boats; but the day was ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... was attacked at night by a suspicious-looking individual. This occurrence led him to believe that he himself might have already heard of a similar episode at the time of the dream. In connection with the ax he recalled that during that period of his life he once hurt his hand with an ax while chopping wood. This immediately led to his relations with his younger brother, whom he used to maltreat and knock down. In particular, he recalled an occasion when he struck his brother on the head with his boot until he bled, whereupon his mother remarked: "I fear he will kill ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud |
