"Gimlet" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... speed, in this instance, it is you who provide it. The motor of an aeroplane, driving the propeller of the machine, turns this at 1000 or more revolutions a minute, and causes its curved blades to screw forward through the air as they turn, like those of a ship's propeller through water—or a gimlet into wood. The propeller, as it bores its way into the air, draws or pushes the aeroplane across the ground; and the speed grows rapidly until the air, sweeping with an increasing pressure beneath the planes, becomes sufficient to ...
— Learning to Fly - A Practical Manual for Beginners • Claude Grahame-White
... self-complacency, and riddled your patience through and through; to put up with him was hard, to put him down was impossible, (your long tolerated nuisance of fifty is always incorrigible.) His bore was surprising considering the smallness of his calibre; like a meagre gimlet, he would drill a small hole in some unimportant statement, and then gather up his opima spolia, and march off to the sound of his own trumpet. For instance, on convicting you of assigning a fine picture to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... a malefactor, why not a lawyer?" she added. A soldier said he would get a gimlet and bore a hole into the Arminian. "Then you must get a gimlet that will reach to the top of the castle, where the Arminian lies abed and ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... projected from one pocket, and a pruning-knife from the other. And if there was not a pipe in Bulldog's mouth, stuck in the side of his cheek, "as sure as death!" There was a knife in his hand, with six blades and a corkscrew and a gimlet and the thing for taking the stones out of a horse's hoof—oath again repeated—and Bulldog was trying the edge of the biggest blade upon his finger. Speug, now ascending from height to height, was not surprised to see no necktie, ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... again to John, who was sitting back of the choir, while his "understudy" conducted the service. His face was shaded by his hand, but Amarilly's gimlet glance noted that he frequently sent a fleeting, troubled look toward ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates
... plumb against the surface, and the boring commences. The method is that I witnessed in the wood on the day of the storm. Very slowly the insect veers round from right to left, then from left to right. Her drill is not a spiral gimlet which will sink itself by a constant rotary motion; it is a bradawl, or rather a trochar, which progresses by little bites, by alternative erosion, first in one ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... civilization; a man who was, in this instance at least, the legitimate and intelligible product of the vocation that employed him; a man professionally ready on the merest suspicion (if the merest suspicion paid him) to get under our beds, and to look through gimlet-holes in our doors; a man who would have been useless to his employers if he could have felt a touch of human sympathy in his father's presence; and who would have deservedly forfeited his situation if, under ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... escape. In order to have things wholly secure the two women, after Andy was asleep, pasted paper over the panes of glass in the lower sash, so that no one could see his face at the window, and fastened the sash down by putting a nail into a gimlet-hole at ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur
... delighted at the propinquity of his favourite beverage and decided that he would always remain in the cellar, regaling himself with the vintage. His thirst increased at the prospect, so he produced a gimlet, bored a hole in the vat, and drank and drank till at length he could drink no more; then the fumes of the wine overcame him and he sank down in a drunken stupor. Meanwhile the merry little stream ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... on a chair with a gimlet in his hand, and screwed it tightly into the wainscotting as high as he could reach; then he took a cord from the sacking of his bed, secured it to the gimlet, made a noose, put his head in, kicked the ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... a proportion of fine, able-bodied north-country sailors, as a steadying influence on the devil-may-care portion of the crew. The signing on of a packet ship was quite an historic occasion. All the "gimlet-eyed" rascals in town were on the alert to bleed the sailor as soon as he had got his advance. It was usual for the sailors to sign articles binding themselves to be aboard at 5.30 or 6 a.m. on a fixed date, and in order that there might be no mistake as to how the discipline of the vessel ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... women, also amused Paul very much. From each side of the wearer's head, near the eye, projected a brass ornament, in the shape of a spiral spring, but each circle diminishing in size till the wire ended in a point, like a gimlet. ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic
... prove a stepping-stone to the sheriff's office. The element of surprise he knew was most effective and he was counting upon it to obtain valuable admissions. In the scene, as he visualized it while riding, he was to advance gimlet-eyed, throw open his coat and confront her with the badge which made the ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... severe boring pain—as if a gimlet were being driven into the bone. It is worst at night, preventing sleep, and has been ascribed to compression of the nerves in ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... the answer increased Darrow's interest in Miss Painter. She had not hitherto struck him as being a person of much penetration, but he now felt sure that her gimlet gaze might bore to the heart of ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... the few late flowers that lingered on in spite of frost, some pinched chrysanthemums, a red robin that had withstood the cold, some twigs of butcher's broom with blood-red berries that had defied it, and these she had stuck about the cradle in little gimlet holes that had been drilled round the edge, probably to contain pegs that might hold down a cover, to screen out ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... door: Hew out planks; two should be enough. Fasten these together with two cross-pieces and one angle-piece, using oak pegs instead of nails, if you wish to be truly primitive. For these the holes should be bored part way with a gimlet, and a peg used larger than the hole. The lower end of the back plank is left projecting in a point. (Fig. 8.) This point fits into a hole pecked with a point or bored with an auger ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... rule are a few common words in which g is hard before e or i. They include—-give, get, gill, gimlet, girl, gibberish, gelding, gerrymander, gewgaw, geyser, giddy, gibbon, gift, gig, giggle, gild, gimp, gingham, gird, girt, girth, eager, and begin. G is soft before a consonant in judgment{,} lodgment, acknowledgment, etc. Also in a few ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... There's meal on your dress from the cake you're after putting in the oven—where now did that bellows fall from? (Taking up bellows.) It comes as handy as a gimlet. There (blows the meal off), that now will make a ...
— Three Wonder Plays • Lady I. A. Gregory
... of her was a bullet-headed ownsha," replied Mogue, "and herself—well now, that I may never die in sin, if I could say rightly. I was fetehin' some oats to Gimlet Eye, an' didn't take any particular notice. The ownsha had black sooty hair, cut short, an' walked as if his feet were sore—and indeed it strikes me that he had kibes—for these poor people isn't overly clane, ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... some constitutional disorder and do not in themselves require treatment. The treatment should be applied to the disease which causes the abnormal temperature of the horns. The usual treatment for the supposed hollow horn, which consists in boring the horns with a gimlet and pouring turpentine into the openings thus made, is not only useless and cruel, but is liable to set up an acute inflammation and result in an abscess of ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... was to take some wire, a coil of which he found hanging up in the shed, and cut it into lengths suitable for the bars of his cage. Then he was going to bore a row of holes in the top of his box, near the front edge, with a small gimlet. These holes were to be about half an inch apart, and to be in a line about half an inch from the front edge of the top of the box. The wires were to be passed down through these holes, and then in the bottom of the box, at the points where the ends of those wires would come, respectively, he ...
— Stuyvesant - A Franconia Story • Jacob Abbott
... Don. S'pose I did, but I don't 'member nothing about it. And now look here, sir; seems to me that in half-hour's time it'll be quite dark enough to start; and if I'd got five guineas, I'd give 'em for five big screws, and the use of a gimlet and driver." ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn
... distribution of honours,—in particular recommending an Alfred or an Albert Order. Also, many of my Rifle ballads,—whereof, more anon. And "The Over-sharpened Axe"—applicable to modern Boardschool Educationals: and Colonel Jade's matrimonial tirades, all real life: and "The Grumbling Gimlet," a fable on Content, &c. &c. With plenty more notabilia—which those who have the book can ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... no open package of the lead to be tested, a sample can most easily be obtained by boring into the side or top of a keg with a gimlet, and with it taking out the required quantity; care should be used to free it entirely from the borings or particles of wood, and it should not be larger than the size mentioned; a larger quantity can be reduced, but of course more time will be required, and the experiment ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXIV., No. 12, March 18, 1871 • Various
... Uses of the various Tools:—Plane, Chisel Gimlet, Mallet, Hammer, Files and Nails. ...
— The Book of Sports: - Containing Out-door Sports, Amusements and Recreations, - Including Gymnastics, Gardening & Carpentering • William Martin
... auger or a mortising chisel, or even a good gimlet, the thing would have been easy enough. Easier still had they possessed a "breast bit." But of course not any of these tools could be obtained; nor any other by which a hole might be bored big enough to have admitted the points of their little fingers. Hundreds ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... morphia to calm his nerves. He told Patrick to get a machine for placing the morphia under the horse's skin. But Patrick said that he could do it without the machine. So one day he got the morphia, and began to bore a hole in the horse with a gimlet." ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... age; she looked as near fifteen as thirty, although she was in reality only nineteen, four years younger than her husband. There was much feline slyness in the depths of her little black eyes, which suggested gimlet holes. Her low, bumpy forehead, her slightly depressed nose with delicate quivering nostrils, her thin red lips and prominent chin, parted from her cheeks by strange hollows, all suggested the countenance of an artful dwarf, a living mask of intrigue, an active, envious ambition. With ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... actual work or the improvement in tool design that had occurred since Moxon's Exercises. From Nicholson's list of the tools required by the carpenter—"a ripping saw, a hand saw, an axe, an adze, a socket chisel, a firmer chisel, a ripping chisel, an auguer, a gimlet, a hammer, a mallet, a pair of pincers, and sometimes planes"—there would seem at first glance slight advance since the 1600's. The enumeration of the joiner's tools, however, indicates a considerable proliferation, particularly when compared to earlier writers. By the early 19th century, the more ...
— Woodworking Tools 1600-1900 • Peter C. Welsh
... consciously. So far as he knew, he had no more sentiment than a jack-knife. Although he loved Cynthia Rudd devotedly, and blushed scarlet one day when his cousin found a lock of Cynthia's flaming hair in the box where John kept his fishhooks, spruce gum, flag-root, tickets of standing at the head, gimlet, billets-doux in blue ink, a vile liquid in a bottle to make fish bite, and other precious possessions, yet Cynthia's society had no attractions for him comparable to a day's trout-fishing. She was, after all, only a single and a very ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... trousers, and had a respectable appearance. Judging from one trifling anecdote, I should think they must be honest. When walking in the fields, a young labourer came up to Mr. Davies, and gave him a knife and gimlet, saying that he had found them on the road, and did not know to whom they belonged! These young men and boys appeared very merry and good-humoured. In the evening I saw a party of them at cricket: when I thought of the austerity of which the missionaries ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... hard wood," objected the practical Sam. "You can drive Oak pegs into Pine, but you can't drive wooden pegs into hard wood without you make some sort of a hole first. Maybe I'd better bring a gimlet." ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... to 20 lb. Small screw-driver. Small gimlet. Small bottle clockmaker's oil. Bottle varnish. Carriage-lamp, and candles to fit, for travelling. Two packs playing-cards. Good-sized flask. Flat glass or horn drinking-cup. Pocket-scissors. The kind that shut ...
— Scotch Loch-Fishing • AKA Black Palmer, William Senior
... Raygan, as Miss Child obeyed. He might have meant the wearer or the dress. Peter Rolls flashed a gimlet glance his way to see which. He felt uncomfortably responsible for the manners of the visitors and the feelings of the visited. But the face of Rags was grave, and no offence could be taken. Peter Rolls withdrew ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... properly introduced to your acquaintance. She is remarkably civil to Mr Quin; of whose sarcastic humour she seems to stand in awe; but her caution is no match for her impertinence. 'Mr Gwynn (said she the other day) I was once vastly entertained with your playing the Ghost of Gimlet at Drury-lane, when you rose up through the stage, with a white face and red eyes, and spoke of quails upon the frightful porcofine — Do, pray, spout a little the Ghost of Gimlet.' 'Madam (said Quin, with a glance of ineffable disdain) the Ghost of Gimlet is laid, never to rise ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... teeth determinedly, Ralph Wonderson swarmed up the Virginia-creeper until he reached the closely-shuttered window. Here he clung precariously with one hand while with the other he produced a gimlet and noiselessly bored two holes in the green shutters. Was he too late? The question shot through his brain. With a quick intake of breath he applied an eye to one hole and an ear to the other and watched ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 16, 1914 • Various
... bought in most winter sports shops. Holes, at different intervals fitting the clamps which should be put on lengthwise, may be bored beforehand in the Ski tip, in order to save time when the tip may be needed on tour. The gimlet supplied with the clamps is usually a poor one, and I always carry a spare gimlet, a little larger than is necessary, as it is difficult to make the holes in exactly the right place in a broken Ski. Cold and clumsy hands have always to be ...
— Ski-running • Katharine Symonds Furse
... two sons and two daughters bent their critical eyes upon the male author of their being. It was a moment of sweet triumph for the old man for which he had made the most careful preparations. It was in vain that their gimlet-like faculties sought to discover flaws in the eminently fashionable costume of white striped serge, the brand-new yellow shoes, the jaunty summer necktie, and the appropriate hat, whereby I was transformed from a plain man to a respectable-looking member of society. The father ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... all the world like a yellow, shrivelled parchment himself. Regular gimlet eyes, too, and a very fitch for sharpness, though younger than his appearance might make ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... stable and the young man were still busy doctoring the sore when Curly arrived with Warren. The buyer was a roundbodied man with black gimlet eyes that saw much he never told. The bargain he drove was a hard one, but it did not take long to come to terms at about one-third the value of the string he was purchasing. Very likely he had his suspicions, but he did not voice them. No doubt they cut a figure in the price. He let ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine
... hiding-place, and in the bottom of it he set the candlestick. Then he measured off about thirty-five feet of fuse—the barrel's distance from the back of the cabin. He bored a hole in the side of the barrel—here is the large gimlet he did it with. He went on and finished his work; and when it was done, one end of the fuse was in Buckner's cabin, and the other end, with a notch chipped in it to expose the powder, was in the hole in the candle—timed to blow the place up at one o'clock ...
— A Double Barrelled Detective Story • Mark Twain
... point. Of course the maintenance men had checked each item when they had, after his last trip, dismantled, cleaned, oiled, polished, tested, and reassembled one part after another. Then maintenance supervisors had checked over the ship with a gimlet-eyed attitude of hoping to find some flaw, just one tiny flub, so they could turn some luckless mechanic inside out. The Inspection Department, traditionally an enemy of Maintenance, took over from ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... once upon a time was treated by boring a hole into the horn with a small gimlet and pouring Turpentine into the opening. This treatment is useless and harmful. It produces inflammation of the frontal sinuses of the head and chances are death of the animal will follow as a result of the treatment ...
— The Veterinarian • Chas. J. Korinek
... theme I hung and pointed out, Full eagerly, how Mephistopheles Ordered the gimlet ...
— A Wreath of Virginia Bay Leaves • James Barron Hope
... complicated," Dauntrey muttered; but Eve gave him a gimlet look from under level brows, and he slouched away obediently, leaving his wife to follow slowly ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... was yet at its height, a limping, gimlet-eyed, sour-faced person—it may be some discharged custom-house officer, who, suddenly stripped of convenient means of support, had concluded to be avenged on government and humanity by making himself miserable for life, either by hating or suspecting ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... Cause? Have we not all cause? Is not the world a big butt of humour, into which all who will may drive a gimlet? See, I am a salaried wit; and is there aught in nature more ridiculous? A poor, dull, heart-broken man, who must needs be merry, or he will be whipped; who must rejoice, lest he starve; who must jest you, jibe ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... come to us they're thin, They're angular, or smooth and fat, Some spiral are, and gimlet in, And some are sharp, and others flat. The slim one pink you clean and neat, The flat ones bat a solid blow Much as a camel throws his feet, And leave you beastly incomplete. If lucky you ...
— 'Hello, Soldier!' - Khaki Verse • Edward Dyson
... alone disappears almost entirely. This is the tit-bit, not very substantial, but extremely tasty, it would seem. Here, in fact, in the insect's crop, the syrup is accumulated, the sugary sap which the Cicada's gimlet taps from the tender bark. Is it because of this dainty that the prey's abdomen is preferred to any other morsel? It is ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... epicurean connoisseur has only to invoke, and, at a touch of the magic wand of Mammon, it is there before him. Wines, too,—what-not, est-est, tokay, and all the rest, flowing from the inexhaustible tap of the same Mephistopheles, with his golden gimlet. All the demons of luxury riot there, and at your nod ransack the earth for a flavor or a flask; and place it before you, almost before your wish is uttered. It is, indeed, the Mahomet's paradise of all true believers in the stomach, and worshippers of ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... seeing them. From them her glance travelled to her shabby old shoes, the spots on her frock, her hands. Her face flushed a fiery red and her eyes filled. Not for any consideration could she at that moment have raised her eyes. She knew, she felt those gimlet glances, the looks and meaning smiles that were being exchanged, and she writhed under them, while her heart felt very full and sore. She could not talk, her mind was weighed down. In her embarrassment she could think ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... the reminiscent smile gave place to an expression of surprise, as the singer became conscious of a deeper shadow falling directly in front of her. She glanced up quickly, and found herself looking into the face of a man whose gimlet-like ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... "Was not the apostle reproved for that same sin? Thou art a Didymus, Bardolph;—an incredulous paynim, a most unspeculative rogue! Have I carracks trading in the Indies? Have I robbed the exchequer of late? Have I the Golden Fleece for a cloak? Nay, it is paltry gimlet, and that augurs badly. Why, does this knavish watchman take me for a raven to feed him in the wilderness? Tell him there are no such ravens hereabout; else had I ravenously limed the house-tops and set ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... principal tusk has the hardness of steel. Some of these tusks have been found buried in the bodies of whales, which the unicorn always attacks with success. Others have been drawn out, not without trouble, from the bottoms of ships, which they had pierced through and through, as a gimlet pierces a barrel. The Museum of the Faculty of Medicine of Paris possesses one of these defensive weapons, two yards and a quarter in length, and fifteen inches in ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... of whom may be total strangers, invades his privacy and theirs. Have you noticed how, in our Pullman parlor cars, a party sitting together, generally young women, will shriek their conversation in a voice that bores like a gimlet through the whole place? That is an invasion of privacy. In England "it isn't done." We shouldn't stand it in a theatre, but in parlor cars we do stand it. It is a good instance to show that the Englishman's right to privacy ...
— A Straight Deal - or The Ancient Grudge • Owen Wister
... mostly small people: Their brethren, the peasants, 50 And soldiers and waggoners, Workmen and beggars. The soldiers and beggars They pass without speaking. Not asking if happy Or grievous their lot: The soldier, we know, Shaves his beard with a gimlet, Has nothing but smoke In the winter to warm him,— 60 What joy ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... head and shoulders and body into the air-drift like a gimlet. A foot at a time he burrowed himself through, heaving his body up and down and sideways to pack the light snow, leaving a round tunnel two feet in diameter behind him. Within an hour he had come to the outer crust on the windward side of the big snow-dune. He did not break through this crust, ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... last not to bolt the door, but clapped it to, so that the knight could not peep through. He is not to be outwitted, however; drew off his buff doublet, took out a gimlet from his pocket, and bored a hole in the door, laid his hat upon the doublet, took his naked sword between his legs, and, resting both hands firmly on the hilt, bent down and placed his eye at the gimlet-hole, through which he could distinctly see ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... to come from something. Now, while I was scared, I don't believe in such things as ghosts. Well, then, the noise must have come from some human throat. When I got up at five this morning I began to think harder than ever. Then I went and got this gimlet out of the little tool box and bored a tiny hole through the wood in this shutter. When I peeped I saw a light, surely enough, in the shack. There were sparks, too, coming up out of the chimney. Then I saw a shadow, and next I saw Mr. Fits himself at the ...
— The Grammar School Boys Snowbound - or, Dick & Co. at Winter Sports • H. Irving Hancock
... undertook. One day he borrowed a dulcimer, and made one by it. With no other tools than the hammer-key, and pliers of the stocking-frame for hammer and pincers, his pocket-knife, and a one-pronged fork that served as spring, awl, and gimlet, he made a capital dulcimer, which he sold for sixteen shillings. Here were both observation and perseverance, though not more finely developed than they were in the character ...
— The Printer Boy. - Or How Benjamin Franklin Made His Mark. An Example for Youth. • William M. Thayer
... else. Within the courtyard was growing the trunk of an olive; round it I built my bed-chamber with thick stones and roofed it well, placing in it doors that shut tight. Then I cut away the olive branches, smoothed the trunk, made a bedpost, and bored all with a gimlet. From that foundation I smoothed my bed, tricking it out with gold and silver and ivory and stretching from its frame thongs of cow-hide dyed red. Such is the wonder I tell of, yet I know not, Lady, whether the bed is yet fixed there, or whether another hath moved it, cutting the foundation ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... moved on,—"about the time I stood on the sidewalk to see the procession go by, in Boston, when we commemorated Bunker Hill?" And she went on with a favorite reminiscence: how she had held on to her inch of standing-room, in spite of a fat and puffing man, a gimlet-elbowed woman, and ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... that Miss Betty had become temporarily deranged, and later that she had escaped from the private hospital where she had been taken, and they were doing all in their power to find her. In reply to Candace's gimlet-like questions she had given the name of a hospital where she said Betty had been taken at first, and everything seemed altogether plausible. But as the days went by and the horror of her absence grew ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill
... As for his face, it was of the warm, ardent tint of a piatok [23]. Persons of this kind—persons to whose designing nature has devoted not much thought, and in the fashioning of whose frames she has used no instruments so delicate as a file or a gimlet and so forth—are not uncommon. Such persons she merely roughhews. One cut with a hatchet, and there results a nose; another such cut with a hatchet, and there materialises a pair of lips; two thrusts with a drill, and there issues a pair of eyes. Lastly, scorning to plane down the ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... My dear, there are some men whose heads have to be held while an opening is made with a gimlet before they will take a thing in. You husband is doubtless a good man, but doubtless also dense. How long before your baby was born did you ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... introduced as "a genuine Jew from Jerusalem" came out from a gloomy recess filled with tusks and sacks of dried red pepper, and watched everything from now on with an eye like a gimlet, writing down in a book against each sergeant's name whatever he took to drink. They appeared to have no check on him. Nobody signed anything. Nobody as much ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... papers." I mentioned my name and then went right on to say, "I wanted to tell you the first thing, I hadn't nothin' to do with that slightin' piece about you you probable read in the Jonesville Auger. The Nation knew I had writ for it, and for the Gimlet, and I wuz awful afraid you'd think it wuz me, and be mad at me, but I'm as innocent as a infant babe. Keturah Snyder writ it, and she's been through with trials enough to make her bitter but bein' so mad she sez things she can't prove. Now she thinks you could kep' ...
— Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition • Marietta Holley
... fellow. This was a black, ugly fly—a bore, the Hansons called him—who lived by hundreds in the boarding of our house. He entered by a round hole, more neatly pierced than a man could do it with a gimlet, and he seems to have spent his life in cutting out the interior of the plank, but whether as a dwelling or a store-house, I could never find. When I used to lie in bed in the morning for a rest—we had no easy-chairs ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... as good," said Harris. "It was water the boys came down here in search of; and they've tapped five barrels of sirup in the operation, and finally they've stuck the gimlet into a cask ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... the skeleton of the gibbet and the hollow square of witnesses. He could feel the rope scratching his neck. He could both see and feel, most hideous of all, the piercing triumph in that dread hour of Fitzpatrick's gimlet eyes. ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... the children espy, but a nice firm deal box, containing a little saw, a little plane, a hammer, a gimlet, a chisel, and sundry different sizes of nails. Was there ever anything so delightful, especially to David, who loved nothing so well as running after George Bowles the carpenter, and handling his tools. What was ...
— The Stokesley Secret • Charlotte M. Yonge
... should be carried such carpenter's tools as a hand-saw, auger, gimlet, chisel, shaving-knife, etc., an axe, hammer, and hatchet. This last weapon every man should have in his belt, with a ...
— What I Saw in California • Edwin Bryant
... drift in to Gimlet Butte two or three days ago, and while I was up at the depot looking for some freight a train sashaid in and side tracked a flat car. There was an automobile on that car addressed to Miss Helen Messiter. Now, automobiles are awful seldom in this country. ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... the House did not expose these defects enough. Cannon did well on sugar, but nobody dissected the whiskey section which bored gimlet holes into the bottom of every barrel of high wine to let it out without paying a cent of tax. The Democrats are therefore the real free whiskeyites. This ought to be shown up thoroughly in the Senate. Our ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... cyclopaedia, and there is the picture of which this is the original. Sir William Herschel's great telescope! It was just about as big, as it stood there by the roadside, as it was in the picture, not much different any way. Why should it be? The pupil of your eye is only a gimlet-hole, not so very much bigger than the eye of a sail-needle, and a camel has to go through it before you can see him. You look into a stereoscope and think you see a miniature of a building or a mountain; you ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... purple tent, with the fruits and the cocoa-nut. As you know, a cocoa-nut is not handy to get at the inside of, at the best of times, so Quentin set that aside, meaning to ask Blue Mantle later on for a gimlet ...
— The Magic World • Edith Nesbit
... Why, they go at a big dead fish if it's lying in the water, take a good mouthful, and then set their long bodies and tails to work, and spin round and round like a gimlet or a ship augur, and bore the piece ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... Collar on his sorrel mare. Say, I'll tell ye," Brimstead came close to Harry and added in a low tone: "If Biggs tries any fightin' business with Collar he'll git killed sure. That man loves excitement. He don't take no nonsense at all, and he can put a bullet into a gimlet hole at ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... as if somebody had run a gimlet into him, and even Psmith started slightly. They had not heard Mr Bickersdyke approaching. Mike, who had been stolidly entering addresses in his ledger during the latter part of the conversation, was also taken ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... whole of time and the whole of substance, and consider that all individual things as to substance are a grain of a fig, and as to time the turning of a gimlet. ...
— The Thoughts Of The Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius
... market-day to the neighboring town, and took along with him his little daughter, my nurse, upon a pillion behind him. The box was close on every side, with a little door for me to go in and out, and a few gimlet-holes to let in air. The girl had been so careful as to put the quilt of her baby's bed into it for me to lie down on. However, I was terribly shaken and discomposed in this journey, tho it were but of half an hour; for the horse went about forty feet at every step, and trotted so high ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... an orange; and one's cheeks once whitened, one can't—you are tickling me with your brush—one can't remain like a miller, so a touch of rouge is inevitable. And then—see how wicked it is—if, after all that, one does not enlarge the eyes a bit, they look as if they had been bored with a gimlet, don't they? It is like this that one goes on little by little, till ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... when this scant-witted knave invited me to taste some of his master's wine, and accordingly to the cellar we went. 'This wine will surprise you,' quoth he, as we broached the first hogshead. And truly it did surprise me, for no wine followed the gimlet. So we went on to another, and another, and another, till we tried half a score of them, and all with the same result. Upon this I seized a hammer which was lying by and sounded the casks, but none ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... know her already! Long before setting foot in Japan, I had met with her, on every fan, on every tea-cup—with her silly air, her puffy little visage, her tiny eyes, mere gimlet-holes above those expanses of impossible pink and ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... him what you have heard," it said. "He would be humiliated. Or"—the thought was sharp as a gimlet—"what if he saw you, and knew you were listening? What if he talked just for effect? He is so clever! He is subtle enough for that. And wouldn't it be more like the man, than to ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... at him. He was an odd-looking, active little man of about fifty with keen blue eyes that bored into one like a gimlet. ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... great deal to do and the carpenter was doing that great deal well, but at his own pace, for "Chips" was not a rapid man. If he had a hole to make with gimlet or augur he did not dash at it and perhaps bore the hole a quarter or half an inch out of place, but took his measurements slowly and methodically, and no matter who or what was waiting he ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn
... time Mr. Winkle, with his face and hands blue with the cold, had been forcing gimlet into the soles of his boots, and putting his skates on, with the points behind, and getting the straps into a very complicated and entangled state, with the assistance of Mr. Snodgrass, who knew rather less about skates than a Hindoo. At length, however, with the assistance ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... little man, as ugly as though he were a blue-blooded grandee. His fiery eyes, placed very close to his nose and piercing as a gimlet, would have won him the name of a sorcerer in Naples. He seemed gentle because he was calm, quiet, and slow in his movements; and for this reason people commonly called him "goodman Fario." But his skin—the color of ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... "Exactly. A mosquito's gimlet carries more terrors for the explorer than the elephant's trunk, and his hum is more dreaded than the roar of the lion. The mosquito is fever-winged, alert, and bloodthirsty. He carries the germs of malaria with him; and malaria kills off more men ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... from that, I should like to know? Godfrey was hardly better provided. However, it was with extreme satisfaction that he discovered in his pocket an excellent knife, whose leather case had kept it from the sea-water. This knife, with blade, gimlet, hook, and saw, was a valuable instrument under the circumstances. But besides this tool, Godfrey and his companion had only their two hands; and as the hands of the professor had never been used except in playing his fiddle, and making his gestures, Godfrey ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... nothing, nothing between friends." Biaggio slipped the quarter into the cigar box under the counter and smiled a fat smile at Luigi. But he did not hold the door open when Luigi went, and his little eyes were hard like gimlet points. "So," he whispered softly. "So. One learns quickly, very quickly in this new country. Only two dollars this time. Bene, Gino mio, the price of sausage, as that of oil, ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... we set our tools at work. If the rodents with their sharp teeth cut wood better than we can, we do it still better with the ax, the chisel, the saw. Some birds, with the help of a strong beak, by repeated blows, penetrate the trunk of a tree: but the auger, the gimlet, the wimble do the same work better and more quickly. The knife is superior to the carnivore's teeth for tearing meat; the hoe better than the mole's paw for digging earth, the trowel than the beaver's tail for beating and spreading mortar. ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... as it was impossible for him to calm it by drinking. His fixed idea, which had been intensified by a month of drunkenness, and which was continually increasing in his absolute solitude? pene-trated him like a gimlet. He now walked about his house like a wild beast in its cage, putting his eat to the door to listen if the other were there, and defying him through the wall. Then as soon as he dozed, overcome by fatigue, he heard the voice which made him leap to ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... whether there ever was any age of chivalry. . . . . It certainly was no chivalric sentiment that made men case themselves in impenetrable iron, and ride about in iron prisons, fearfully peeping at their enemies through little slits and gimlet-holes. The unprotected breast of a private soldier must have shamed his leaders in those days. The point of honor ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... allow the bar to revolve freely on the inside of the door and bar the door when resting in the A and C catches. But if a string is attached to one end it may be unfastened by pulling the string up through the gimlet hole in ...
— Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard
... naval and military. When I mentioned my name and showed my order for transportation, the senior officer grunted inarticulately, and waved me in the direction of his clerk, glaring at me meanwhile with an expression which combined singularly the dissimilar effects of a gimlet and a plane. The rotund junior contented himself with glancing suspiciously at the order and sternly at me. As if reassured, however, by my plausible countenance, he flipped over the pages of a ledger, told me the number of my stateroom, and hunted up a packet of letters, which ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... meat is another man's poison," said the captain, philosophically; "no use fretting, care killed a cat. I am as badly off as you; for, hang me, if there was not a Bow Street runner in the town. I caught his eye fixed on me like a gimlet: so I bolted—went to N——, left my pheaton and groom there for the present, and have doubled back, to bauffle pursuit, and cut across the country. You recollect that voice girl we saw in the coach; 'gad, I served her spouse that is to be a praetty trick! Borrowed his money under pretence of ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 2 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... soon as it was impossible for him to calm it. His fixed idea then, which had been intensified by a month of drunkenness, and which was continually increasing in his absolute solitude, penetrated him like a gimlet. He now walked about the house like a wild beast in its cage, putting his ear to the door to listen if the other were there and defying him through the wall. Then, as soon as he dozed, overcome by fatigue, he heard the voice which made him leap ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... strength, nor bled of its vitality. And shall it be admitted that this potent argument of little minds is as powerless as the dullards of all ages have steadfastly maintained? Forbid it, Heaven! the gimlet is as proper a gimlet as any in all Christendom, but the timber is too hard to pierce! Grant ye that "the movement" is waxing more wondrous with each springing sun, who shall say what it might not have been but for the sharp ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... bored him strangely a moment with his little gimlet eyes, snorted out a laugh, clapped ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... policeman, lounging beneath the corrugated iron awning of a corner saloon, faced about with a low whistle, to stare after him. Maitland experienced a chill sense of criminal guilt; he was painfully conscious of those two shrewd eyes, boring gimlet-like into his back, overlooking no detail of the wreck of his evening clothes. Involuntarily he glanced down at his legs, and they moved mechanically beneath the edge of his overcoat, like twin animated columns of mud and dust, openly advertising ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... time, Mr. Winkle, with his face and hands blue with the cold, had been forcing a gimlet into the soles of his feet, and putting his skates on with the points behind, and getting the straps into a very complicated and entangled state, with the assistance of Mr. Snodgrass, who knew rather less about skates than a Hindoo. At length, however, ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... Patience went soberly out in the yard with the other girls. There was a little restraint over all the scholars. They looked with awe at the Squire's horse and chaise. The horse was tied after a novel fashion, an invention of the Squire's own. He had driven a gimlet into the schoolhouse wall, and tied his horse to it with a stout rope. Whenever the Squire drove he carried with him his gimlet, in case there should be no hitching-post. Occasionally house-owners rebelled, but it made no difference; ...
— The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... stake is used for supporting drooping plants, such as fuchsias. A much better one can easily be made by taking a round stick, say one-half or three-fourths of an inch in diameter and boring small holes through it with a gimlet. Stout pieces of wire, of a size that will fit snugly are inserted and twisted once around to reinforce the wood. These may then be bent readily to any angle and thus made to conform with needs of the particular plant ...
— Gardening Indoors and Under Glass • F. F. Rockwell
... go, I think. There is money in the invention, or that old gimlet-eye would not be so keen about it; I talked the matter over with him at ...
— Beyond The Rocks - A Love Story • Elinor Glyn
... see, Geoff, she's got a grouch on because I was out last night, so, if she gives you the gimlet eye at first, just josh her along a bit. Now slick yourself up an' come on." Obediently Mr. Ravenslee arose and having tightened his neckerchief and smoothed his curly hair, crossed the landing and followed Spike into the opposite flat, a place of startling cleanliness as to floors ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... of Limbs and Trunks for the purpose of obtaining grub. It may be mentioned as an amiable idiosyncracy of the mosquito, that it is fond of babies. If there is a child in the house, it is sure to spot the playful innocent; and by means of an ingenious contrivance combining the principles of the gimlet and the air-pump, it soon relieves the little human bud of its superfluous juices. It is, in fact, a born surgeon, a Sangrado of the Air, and rivals that celebrated Spanish Leech in its fondness for phlebotomy. Some infidels, who do not subscribe ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 18, July 30, 1870 • Various
... it was both backache and headache. She was a steely-faced woman of middle age with gimlet eyes and dank black hair in a ragged fringe. As she spoke she eyed the company at the table with a ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... the soil. I asked Mr. Secor, a friend who operates a coal mine,—and farms for recreation,—if he thought alfalfa could be raised on this type of soil. He replied: "That depends on what kind of a gimlet it has on its ...
— The Story of the Soil • Cyril G. Hopkins
... "passbox" or powder bucket. Hanging from the cascabel are two pouches: the tube-pouch containing friction "tubes" (primers for the vent) and the lanyard; and the gunner's pouch with the gunner's level, breech-sight, pick, gimlet, vent-punch, chalk, and fingerstall (a leather cover for the gunner's second left finger when the gun gets hot). Under the wheels are two chocks; the vent-cover is on the vent, a tompion in the muzzle; a broom leans against the parapet ...
— Artillery Through the Ages - A Short Illustrated History of Cannon, Emphasizing Types Used in America • Albert Manucy
... you handed our gimlet-eyed friend," said Pringle admiringly. "Neatest bit of work I ever saw. Sir, to you! My compliments!" He placed a chair near the front door and sat down. "I feel like a lion in a den ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... Carpenter in the Swan, and asking him into his cabin, chargeth him to conceal for a time, a piece of service, which he must in any case consent to do aboard his own ship: that was, in the middle of the second watch, to go down secretly into the well of the ship, and with a spike-gimlet, to bore three holes, as near the keel as he could, and lay something against it, that the force of the water entering, might make no great noise, nor be discovered by a ...
— Sir Francis Drake Revived • Philip Nichols
... M. de Bausset, an eye-witness of the ceremony, tells us in his Memoirs: "I was naturally anxious to see the Empress as soon as she should reach the middle room to take a place on the throne, and give her courtiers time to arrange themselves about her, before we were introduced. I had brought a gimlet, and with this I had bored a good many holes in the door of our room. This little indiscretion, which was not mentioned in our report, gave us an opportunity to inspect the appearance of our young sovereign at our ease. I need not say that it was the ladies of our party who were most anxious ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... group of bons vivants, these. The host had realized it and had brought out his best. Most of it, to be sure, had come from Beaver Street, something "rather dry, with an excellent bouquet," the crafty salesman with gimlet eyes had said; but, then, most of the old Madeira does come from Beaver Street, except Portman's, who has a fellow with a nose and a palate hunting the auction rooms for that particular Sunset of 1834 which had lain in old ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... feel that it would be delicate at that moment to protest. Therefore on leaving the shop the Terror bought an account-book. His distrust of literature prevented him from paying more than a penny for it. From the stationer's he went to an ironmonger's and bought a saw, a brace, a gimlet, a screw-driver and two gross of screws—his tool-box had long needed refilling. Then they mounted their machines proudly (they had learned to ride on the machines of acquaintances) and rode home. After their visit to the confectioner's they ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... that would blow his last dime on havin' his collar 'n' cuffs polished, and would go without eatin' rather than frisk the free lunch at a beer joint. He was willin' to talk about anything but the female with the gimlet eyes and the ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... Voltairean, but a difficult one for me. Why Stephen Girard, the worthy "merchant and mariner" who endowed this institution, was so suspicious of the cloth, no matter what its cut, I do not know; no doubt he had his reasons; but his prejudices are faithfully respected by his janitor, whose eye is a very gimlet of suspicion. However, we got in and saw the philanthropist's tomb and his household effects ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... called the date-shell can, assisted by its liquid acid, pierce the hardest stone with its cylindrical gimlet. The columns of Hellenic temples, submerged in the Gulf of Naples and brought to light by an earthquake, are bored from one end to the other by ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... were to take a gimlet and bore a hole in Mrs. Rodman's head, you couldn't make her believe anybody would ...
— Mary Cary - "Frequently Martha" • Kate Langley Bosher
... and carefully concealed their clothes. The petards were taken out from beneath a heap of stones, where Hugh had hid them, and were fixed on the piece of timber, one end of which was just afloat in the stream. By their side was placed some lengths of fuse, a brace of pistols, a long gimlet, some hooks, and cord. Then just as it was fairly dark the log was silently pushed into the water, and swimming beside it, with one hand upon it, the little party started ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty
... of domestic service. If we consider only the case of well-managed houses, then we may wonder why any girl should enter a factory; but, on the other hand, there is that dire vision of the mean shrew with gimlet eye and bitter tongue! What would the mean shrew have made of Margaret Catchpole, the Suffolk girl who was transported about one hundred years ago? There is a problem. That girl's letters to her mistress are simply throbbing ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... remained near the door, because there were some people with Coupeau. The fair, rosy house surgeon was standing up, having given his chair to a bald old gentleman who was decorated and had a pointed face like a weasel. He was no doubt the head doctor, for his glance was as sharp and piercing as a gimlet. All the dealers in sudden death have a ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... I heard C. muttering like distant thunder, and asked him mildly if he preferred to take the wheel; but his finger was even more painful than his temper. I felt his glare like a gimlet in the back; but Pat more loudly than needful expressed her delight in seeing Hingham a second time. "It is exactly like Cranford," she said. "New England seems to be full of Cranfords, but Hingham is the most Cranfordy of all. And I don't believe even the Old England Cranford could ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... clothed his slightly bent figure in greenish cloth, finished with white metal buttons, tawny from wear. His gray hair was so accurately combed and flattened over his yellow pate that it made it look like a furrowed field. His little green eyes, that might have been pierced with a gimlet, flashed beneath arches faintly tinged with red in the place of eyebrows. Anxieties had wrinkled his forehead with as many horizontal lines as there were creases in his coat. This colorless face expressed patience, commercial shrewdness, ...
— At the Sign of the Cat and Racket • Honore de Balzac
... heifer was brought to Matavai. I immediately went on shore and found that he had been as good as his word. The purchase money was paid, which consisted of a shirt, a hatchet, a spike nail, a knife, a pair of scissors, a gimlet, and file; to which was added a small quantity of loaf-sugar. Teppahoo appeared well pleased with his bargain; and I sent the heifer to Poeeno's residence near which was ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh
... the exact dimensions of the box, lined with baize. His resources with regard to food and water consisted of the following: One bladder of water and a few small biscuits. His mechanical implement to meet the death-struggle for fresh air, all told, was one large gimlet. Satisfied that it would be far better to peril his life for freedom in this way than to remain under the galling yoke of Slavery, he entered his box, which was safely nailed up and hooped with five hickory hoops, and was then addressed by his next friend, James ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... up, down and across, with an eye like a gimlet; she takes the scrutiny cheerfully, as her duty and his due, offers him her clear, grey eyes (her only reference for character) and her capable, trim, broad-shouldered figure as ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... intellectual it must be in words, and hence as well as because it must imply impromptu talent, the comic situations of a farce or pantomime are not witty. When Poole represents Paul Pry as peeping through a gimlet hole, as attacked with a red hot poker, or blown out of a closet full of fireworks, and where Douglas Jerrold on the Bridge of Ludgate makes the innkeeper tells Charles II., in his disguise, all the bad stories he has heard about his Majesty, we merely see the ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange |
