Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Rail   Listen
verb
Rail  v. i.  To flow forth; to roll out; to course. (Obs.) "Streams of tears from her fair eyes forth railing."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Rail" Quotes from Famous Books



... side, got a fishing-line, and began amusing herself therewith, while the ship slipped on quietly and silently as ever, save when Ayacanora laughed and clapped her hands at the flying-fish scudding from the bonitos. At last, tired of doing nothing, she went forward to the poop-rail to listen to John Squire the armorer, who sat tinkering a headpiece, and humming a song, mutato nomine, concerning ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... not the only one who used a glass, for there was nothing to do now but wait for the coming attack; and as I had been watching for some time with the glass on the rail, one eye shut, and the other close to the glass, I suddenly ceased, for my right eye felt dazzled by the glare of the sun, and I found that Mr Frewen was ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn

... multiplication table as they did. When Tuesday night came round, the Squire paid him a dollar, said he was "a likely boy," and might stay another week if he chose. Ben thanked him and thought he would; but the next morning, after he had put up the bars, he remained sitting on the top rail to consider his prospects, for he felt uncommonly reluctant to go back to the society of rough Pat. Like most boys, he hated work, unless it was of a sort which just suited him; then he could toil like a beaver and never tire. His wandering life had given him no habits of steady ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott

... Lucian being so feeble and Julian so full. The office was open but empty. Its clock read two. The card-tables were vacant. The bar was closed. Out on the dim boiler deck he found only the two who had fleeced Basile. They sat at the very front, elbow to elbow, with their feet up on the rail. Their quiet talk ceased as he came near and stood looking out over the gliding bow and the waters beyond, which were out of their banks and stretched everywhere off into ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable

... verse, Come out with some lampoon on D'Anvers. A pamphlet in Sir Bob's defence Will never fail to bring in pence: Nor be concerned about the sale— He pays his workmen on the nail. Display the blessings of the nation, And praise the whole administration: Extol the bench of Bishops round; Who at them rail, bid——confound: To Bishop-haters answer thus, (The only logic used by us,) 'What though they don't believe in——, ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... this presumption of the common sense, and therefore in all civilized countries has destroyed this presumption of law. When a railway train runs off the track because of a misplaced switch or a defective rail, there is no presumption that the engineer was careless or could have guarded against the carelessness of the switch tender or of the manufacturer of the rail. When a fire breaks out in a room where scores of shirt-waist makers are confined at their ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner

... which cannot be related without offending modesty; and these he maintained with a strange impudence, against the reasons of the Father, though the king and the noble auditory thought the Christian arguments convincing. But the Bonza still flying out into passion, and continuing to rail and bawl aloud, as if he were rather in a bear-garden than at a solemn disputation, one of the lords there present said, smiling, to him, "If your business be fighting, why did not you go to the kingdom of Amanguchi, when they were in civil wars? there you might have found some one or other ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden

... letters on a card, 'When you want a drink, remember there is a spring in your bed.' And then he hitched it to the foot-rail where I couldn't help seeing it every time I looked that way. Wasn't that hateful? Of course it made me laugh, and it did help me think of something else when I was so thirsty that it seemed as if I'd dry up if they didn't give me ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown

... any rate, to say of sea-life: a man is pre-eminently conscious of a Soul. I feel, remembering the blithe positivism of my early note, that I am here scarcely consistent. As I stood by the rail this morning at four o'clock—the icy fingers of the wind ruffled my hair so that the roots tingled deliciously, and a low, greenish cloud-bank, which was Ireland, lay nebulously against our port bow—I felt a change take place. ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee

... other pennance: that FireDrake did I hit three times on the head, and three times was his Nose discharged against mee; hee stands there like a Morter-piece to blow vs. There was a Habberdashers Wife of small wit, neere him, that rail'd vpon me, till her pinck'd porrenger fell off her head, for kindling such a combustion in the State. I mist the Meteor once, and hit that Woman, who cryed out Clubbes, when I might see from farre, some forty Truncheoners ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... Knowledge, who shall rail Against her beauty, may she mix With men and prosper, who shall fix Her ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers

... that doth this month or two avail To somewhat soothe my Muse's anxious care. For certain minds at certain stories rail, Certain poor jests, which nought but trifles are. If I with deference their lessons hail, What would they more? Be you more prone to spare, More kind than they; less sheathed in rigorous mail; Prince, in a word, your real self declare A ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... already mentioned, at the south side of the beach at Kakooa (Kealakeakua). It was a square solid pile of stones, about forty yards long, twenty broad, and fourteen in height. The top was flat and well paved, and surrounded by a wooden rail, on which were fixed the skulls of the captives sacrificed on the death of their chiefs. In the center of the area stood a ruinous old building of wood, connected with the rail on each side by a stone wall, which next divided the whole space into two ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead

... Arabic that a man picks up from textbooks but at garnering the business end of beach-born dialects—the end that gets results at least expense of time or energy—the Navy goes even the Army half a dozen better. The sublieutenant's argument, bawled from the bridge rail to the reeling little boat below, was a marvel in its own sweet way; it combined abuse and scorn with a cataclysmic blast of ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy

... city the fortress was practically impregnable on account of the precipitous slopes of the cliffs. The other side was defended by three stone walls laid out in zigzag shape, with salient and reentrant angles (demi-lunes), like an old-fashioned rail fence, with many doors, each closed by stone portcullis, in each wall. Within the walls was a citadel of three tall towers. The whole constituted ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... and, leaning against the deck rail, was looking into her face with an expression so different from any she had ever seen in his brown eyes before, wistful and beseeching instead of confident, alert and dauntless, that it set her heart a-flutter with a sudden, tantalizing ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly

... been something a little "priggish" in her superior attitude, in her perpetually drawn comparison between Russian "barbarism" and Finnish "culture." Though her capital, Helsingfors, is but twelve hours by rail from Petrograd, Finland knows as little of the interior of Russia as ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,

... an engine, sir. No man in England knew his work better. But somehow he was not clear of the outer rail. It was just at broad day. He had struck the light, and had the lamp in his hand. As the engine came out of the tunnel, his back was towards her, and she cut him down. That man drove her, and was showing how it happened. ...
— The Signal-Man #33 • Charles Dickens

... is, in my humble opinion, rather unlike a prophet, for this reason, he is in one sense only, to be honored in his own country—transplant him; and though he may be unimpaired, perhaps, in vigor of body; though he may make an excellent fabricator of rail-roads and canals, yet it has always appeared to me he loses his native raciness, except under very peculiar circumstances; he grows different; in a word, he gradually becomes—like the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various

... caused laborers to be brought, and had a tower built to enclose the chapel, within which the remains of Zerbino and Isabella were entombed. Across the stream which flowed near by he built a bridge, scarce two yards wide, and added neither parapet nor rail. On the top of the tower a sentry was placed, who, when any traveller approached the bridge, gave notice to his master. Rodomont thereupon sallied out, and defied the approaching knight to fight him upon the bridge, where any chance step a ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch

... Jackson, hanging over the rail and coughing-"look there; that's a sailor's coffin. Ha! ha! Buttons," turning round to me—"how do you like that, Buttons? Wouldn't you like to take a sail with them 'ere dead men? Wouldn't it be nice?" And then he tried to laugh, but only coughed ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

... the most terrible, the most fatal name in the world. It meant a revival of all the old troubles. Edith rose with trembling limbs, and just then three dreadful creatures came around the corner and stopped to stare at her. There was only a low rail and a thin hedge between her and ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof

... wild soft summer darkness How many and many a night we two together Sat in the park and watched the Hudson Wearing her lights like golden spangles Glinting on black satin. The rail along the curving pathway Was low in a happy place to let us cross, And down the hill a tree that dripped with bloom Sheltered us While your kisses and the flowers, Falling, falling, Tangled my ...
— Rivers to the Sea • Sara Teasdale

... the men shouldered their tools and tumbled out, and we followed them. A few hundred paces in front of us was a railway bridge, over which a road passed, and under which the rail went at a sharp curve. The snow had drifted heavily against the bridge, with its high earth embankment, making manifest at a glance the cause of ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley

... strangeness, and variety." So, nearly forty years ago, wrote the author of "The Poetry of Gardening," a pleasant, though somewhat fantastic essay, first published in the "Carthusian," and afterwards re-published in Murray's "Reading for the Rail," in company with an excellent article from the "Quarterly" by the same author under the title of "The Flower Garden;" and I quote it because this "vain assumption" is probably stronger and more widespread now than when that article was written. We often hear and read accounts of modern ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe

... official action. If a Negro travelled by stage coach, it was among the baggage in the "boot," or on top with the driver. If he were favored with a ride on a street car, it was in a separate car marked, "This car for Colored people." If he journeyed any distance by rail, he was assigned to the "Jim Crow" car, or "smoker," where himself and family were subjected to inconvenience, insult, and the society of the lowest class of white rowdies. If he were hungry and weary at the end of the journey, ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams

... that we almost forgot to take the bottle when we went home. We did forget Aunt Ailsa's hatpin, and Greg had to run back for it, because he can run faster than any of the rest of us, and Captain Lewis held the ferry for him. Everybody leaned out from the rail and peered up the landing, because they thought it must be a fire or the President or something. They all looked awfully disappointed when it was only Greg, with the black necktie still around his head and Aunt's hatpin held very far away from ...
— Us and the Bottleman • Edith Ballinger Price

... sparkling stream. If one recalls youth's glad and care free ways; The distant roar of music is supreme, When viewing life's almost forgotten trail. There is a stream that twines its way about Through shady spots, by broken, rotted rail. The falling water glitters, and the trout, Again, like precious memories, flash and dart. Through bleak and cold, a precipice once crossed Still fills with pride and pain the aging heart; For time has now the thorns and rocks embossed, And thus ...
— Clear Crystals • Clara M. Beede

... was not alone in the world, M. Fougas derived pleasure from all the new objects which civilization placed before his eyes. The speed of the rail-cars fairly intoxicated him. He was inspired with a positive enthusiasm for this force of steam, whose theory was a closed book to him, but on whose results he ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About

... shook, and the warder grew pale, And gladly the shroud would have yielded! The ghost had its clutch on the last iron rail Which the top of the watch-turret shielded. When the moon was obscured by the rush of a cloud, ONE! thunder'd the bell, and unswathed by a shroud, Down went the gaunt ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various

... have been only recently built. The first great one was opened from Liverpool to Manchester in 1830, since which all the great cities have been connected by rail. London with Southampton, Brighton, Dover, Colchester, Exeter, and Birmingham; Birmingham with Gloucester, Liverpool, Lancaster (via Newton and Wigan, and via Manchester and Bolton); also with Leeds (via Manchester ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels

... moving about the house, and being nearly blinded by the sleet, and half frozen besides, drove in at the gate and put up my horse in the old rail stable, where it is now. I then rapped at the door, and getting no invitation went in without one. The room was dark, but having matches I found a candle and lit it. I tried to enter the adjoining room, ...
— Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost Stories • Ambrose Bierce

... never been much of a traveller. It was years since she set her foot inside a railway carriage. She often boasted of her abnormal lack of nerves, but she was also heard to say that accidents by rail were fearful and common, and likely to happen at any moment. She sighed for the old coaching days, and hated the thought of all locomotives propelled by steam. Nevertheless, early in the morning of the day following ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade

... But will faint in the glooms where the dirges of sadness In tremulous murmurs of wretchedness roll; For the sweets of this earth never lavish their kisses Where lives in the valleys of rapture repine; In the tortures they mourn who denounce all the blisses,— They weep in the shadow that rail at the shine. ...
— Oklahoma and Other Poems • Freeman E. Miller

... world enough."[31]—This is not exactly downright cynicism; it is more like disappointment, beating its head frantically against the wall of circumstance. Yet through his bitterest utterances there is felt the warm sentiment that, "let people rail at virtue, at genius and friendship as long as they will—the very names of these disputed qualities are better than anything else that could be substituted for them, and embalm even the most angry abuse ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... but white, continuous mounds, and also marked by trees and shrubs that, in their earlier life, ran the gantlet of the bush-hook. Here and there the stones of the higher and more abrupt walls crop out, while the board and rail fences appear strangely dwarfed by the snow that has fallen and drifted around them. The groves and wood-crowned hills still further away look as drearily uninviting as roofless dwellings with icy hearthstones and smokeless chimneys. Towering above all, on the right, ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe

... occasion to travel more than ten thousand miles by rail since that morning. The same Pullman porter, conductor, hotel-waiter, peddler, book-agent, cabman, and others who were formerly a source of annoyance and irritation have been met, but I am not conscious of a single incivility. All at once the whole world has ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James

... have to compete with the grain-producing countries bordering on the Black and Mediterranean seas, and it requires a premium of over forty per cent on gold to equalize our high-priced labor and long rail transportation ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 • George S. Boutwell

... Queen's chapel. But it being not begun I to Westminster Hall, and there staid and walked, and then to the Swan, and there drank and talked, and did banter a little Frank, and so to White Hall, and sent my coach round, I through the Park to chapel, where I got in up almost to the rail, and with a great deal of patience staid from nine at night to two in the morning, in a very great crowd; and there expected, but found nothing extraordinary, there being nothing but a high masse. The Queen was there, and some ladies. But, Lord! what an odde ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... the ashes out of his pipe against a rail, stood up, and said: "It is not luck which follows us in life, but human beings. There is no crueller beast on this earth than man. Wolf does not eat wolf, but man will ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various

... obeyed the warning. Causing scarcely a ripple in the water, she paddled to the boat. There she clung to the rail and listened. She ...
— Wyn's Camping Days - or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club • Amy Bell Marlowe

... spirit if not in frame, he reached the churchyard where Catherine's dust reposed. The snow had ceased to fall, but it lay deep over the graves; the yew-trees, clad in their white shrouds, gleamed ghost-like through the dimness. Upon the rail that fenced the tomb yet hung a wreath that Fanny's hand had placed there. But the flowers were hid; it was a wreath of snow! Through the intervals of the huge and still clouds, there gleamed a few melancholy stars. The very calm of the holy spot seemed unutterably sad. The Death ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... shall send Sergeant X with 3 men to observe the country from that hill you see over there farther to the south. He will remain there till dark. Send messages to me here. If the company is not here on your return you will find a note for you underneath this rail." ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department

... on the siction of Finnigin, On the road sup'rintinded by Flannigan, A rail give way on a bit av a curve, An' some kyears went off as they made the swerve. "There's nobody hurted," sez Finnigin, "But repoorts must be made to Flannigan," An' he winked at ...
— Standard Selections • Various

... impressive, that departure of the night-express. The two hundred miles it is to travel stretch before it, traced by those slender clews, to lose which is ruin, and about which hang so many dangers. The drawbridges that gape upon the way, the trains that stand smoking and steaming on the track, the rail that has borne the wear so long that it must soon snap under it, the deep cut where the overhanging mass of rocks trembles to its fall, the obstruction that a pitiless malice may have placed in your path, you think of these after the journey is done, but they seldom haunt your ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks

... Mr. Paddock's row of English elms. The gray squirrels were out looking for their breakfasts, and one of them came toward us in light, soft, intermittent leaps, until he was close to the rail of the burial-ground. He was on a grave with a broad blue-slate-stone at its head, and a shrub growing on it. The stone said this was the grave of a young man who was the son of an Honorable gentleman, and who died a hundred years ago and more. —Oh, yes, DIED,—with ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... farmer's wife or daughter in an adjoining pew, friendly and quieting gifts of sprigs of dill, or fennel, or caraway, famous anti-soporifics; and on this herbivorous food he would contentedly browse as long as it lasted. An uneasy, sermon-tired little girl was once given through the pew-rail several stalks of caraway, and with them a large bunch of aromatic southernwood, or "lad's-love" which had been brought to meeting by the matron in the next pew, with a crudely and unconsciously aesthetic sense ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle

... Father's law—Ho, there! My coursers four And chariot, quick! This land is mine no more." Thereat, be sure, each man of us made speed. Swifter than speech we brought them up, each steed Well dight and shining, at our Prince's side. He grasped the reins upon the rail: one stride And there he stood, a perfect charioteer, Each foot in its own station set. Then clear His voice rose, and his arms to heaven were spread: "O Zeus, if I be false, strike thou me dead! But, dead or living, let my Father ...
— Hippolytus/The Bacchae • Euripides

... nay Beast, (I almost said) What cursed Thoughts are got into thy Head? To rail at those to whom thy Life is due, No Mortal yet durst be so vile as you? If whipping Joan was here alive and stout, You do deserve to be well whip'd about. Ten thousand lashes shall adorn thy Bumb, If ever such a whipping Lass should come. 'Tis strange a Woman shou'd be so envy'd, Not only ...
— The Fifteen Comforts of Matrimony: Responses from Men • Various

... the land, and so the actual seaboard—Halifax—and not the big St. Lawrence port, was rail-head for Dick and Jan. But for Jan the enforced confinement of the journey was greatly softened by regular daily visits from his lord. And in Halifax two and a half days of almost unbroken companionship awaited them ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson

... begins a new series which will contain many superb Colored Plates of rare eggs such as Kirtland and Olive Warbler, Carolina Paroquot, Clark's Crow, Ipswich and Rufous Crowned Sparrow, Yellow and Black Rail, Calaveras Warbler, etc. Also splendid illustrations of Birds and Nests, and leading articles by ...
— The Mayflower, January, 1905 • Various

... "Leaving the rail, we proceeded to visit the sick-bed of one of the voluntary workers in the Refuge. We found him recovering from a severe attack of enteric fever complicated with pneumonia of the right lung. A fine, handsome young man, once the leader of the singing in a philharmonic ...
— God's Answers - A Record Of Miss Annie Macpherson's Work at the - Home of Industry, Spitalfields, London, and in Canada • Clara M. S. Lowe

... good-humouredly but supremely contemptuous of the French, because of their manner of pronouncing classical names. What can you expect of a nation, says he, for whom Titus Livy is no better than a "tom-tit-liv-ing" in a hedge, and Marcus Aurelius, the Emperor philosopher, becomes "Mark O'Rail," a mere beggerly, ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland

... enthusiasm and the revolt against abuses which blazed hot within him was not the holiest frame of mind in which to meet a crisis such as had lately threatened him. He knew that he might have been tempted to speak dangerous words, to rail against those in authority, and to bring deeper trouble ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green

... and much resorted to by splendid footmen. A sedan chair was kept inside the railing before the Princess's Arms, but it had never come out within the memory of man; and on fine mornings, the top of every rail (there were eight-and-forty, as Miss Tox had often counted) was ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... known as Kustendji or Kustendje, a seaport on the Black Sea, and capital of the department of Constantza, Rumania; 140 m. E. by S. from Bucharest by rail. Pop. (1900) 12,725. When the Dobrudja was ceded to Rumania in 1878, Constantza was partly rebuilt. In its clean and broad streets there are many synagogues, mosques and churches, for half the inhabitants are Roman Catholics, Moslems, Armenians or Jews; the remainder being Orthodox ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various

... gas-jet, which cast a flickering light upon the outstretched form. This was the next case, which had been waiting its turn while her husband was in the receiving room,—a hand from the railroad yards, whose foot had slipped on a damp rail; now a pulpy, almost shapeless mass, thinly disguised under a white sheet that had fallen from his arms and head. She got up and walked out of the room. She was not wanted there: the hospital had turned its momentary swift attention ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... himself, and not then. I hate to hear a raven croak at a crow for being black. A blind man should not blame his brother for squinting, and he who has lost his legs should not sneer at the lame. Yet so it is, the rottenest bough cracks first, and he who should be the last to speak is the first to rail. Bespattered hogs bespatter others, and he who is full of fault finds fault. They are most apt to speak ill of others who do ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller

... breath as years prevail At this sad wicked world to rail, To slander all her sex impromptu, And wonder what the ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday

... stream Went with me like a presence and a dream. Where once the brambled meads and orchardlands Poured ripe abundance down with mellow hands Of summer; and the birds of field and wood Called to me in a tongue I understood; And in the tangles of the old rail-fence Even the insect tumult had some sense, And every sound a happy eloquence; And more to me than wisest books can teach, The wind and water said; whose words did reach My soul, addressing their magnificent speech, Raucous and rushing, from the ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein

... deep cut on Fadden's Hill, and the snow piled in upon us rapidly. We had a warm blanket for Old Doctor and two big buffalo robes for our own use. We gave him a good feed of hay and oats, and then Uncle Eb cut up a fence rail with our hatchet and built a roaring fire in the stove. We had got a bit chilly wading in the snow, and the fire gave us a mighty ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller

... foolish? Come, dry your tears: is this a modest course To better what is naught, to rail and weep? Grow to a reconcilement, or, by heaven, I 'll ne'er ...
— The White Devil • John Webster

... a little over the rail; that of which we speak must not be heard even by the waves of the Moldau, if we ...
— The History of a Lie - 'The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion' • Herman Bernstein

... to the poop-deck, from the rail of which he watched the guests arriving. As Sir Felix's gig was descried putting off from the shore, the boys swarmed up the ratlines and out on the yards, where they dressed ship very prettily. A brass ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... the child I was seized and put into the boat beside Mona. The poor girl screamed and held out her arms for the little lad, but the boat was shoved off an' the last thing I can remember, as a mountain of water rolled up between us an' the ship, was seein' Michael still clingin' to the rail an' holdin' little Gerald on his arm. Then Mona fainted agin my shoulder and I had my hands full ...
— The Alchemist's Secret • Isabel Cecilia Williams

... advantages of being born in the land of the Puritans, deeming everything that came of the great "Blarney Stone" superior to everything else of the same nature elsewhere; and, while much disposed to sneer and rail at all other parts of the country, just as much indisposed to "take," as disposed to "give." Ben Boden soon detected this weakness in his companion's character, a weakness so very general as scarce to need being pointed ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper

... tack. The breeze hummed through the rigging. The man at the helm humped a shoulder to the sting of the spray, and the rest of the crew, seven or eight in number—tarry, pigtailed, outlandish sailor men—crouched under the windward rail. The skipper sat with a companion on a coil of rope on the dry side of the skylight, and at the moment at which our story opens was oblivious alike of the weather and his difficulties. He sat with his eyes fixed on his neighbour, and in those eyes a wondering, fatuous admiration. So might a ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman

... upper end of the banquet room was a separate table provided for the animals. Toto sat at one end of this table, with a bib tied around his neck and a silver platter to eat from. At the other end was placed a small stand, with a low rail around the edge of it, for Billina and her chicks. The rail kept the ten little Dorothys from falling off the stand, while the Yellow Hen could easily reach over and take her food from her tray upon the table. ...
— The Road to Oz • L. Frank Baum

... be confounded! Wildcats! Not by a long shot;" and Eph broke into the soft chuckle which always preceded his explanations. They reached the orchard fence, and, seating himself squarely on the topmost rail, Eph began impressively: ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various

... roost on trees, but often do not ascend very high; and, indeed, before the leaves are off they are said to be sometimes taken by hand—sliding it along the bough till the legs are grasped, just as you might fowls perched at night on a rail across ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies

... with a mule, Jim!" growled a red-faced man at the rear of the crowd. "Get a rail, boys, and we'll ...
— The Young Engineers in Arizona - Laying Tracks on the Man-killer Quicksand • H. Irving Hancock

... teens. I had watched the little frogs, the hylas, and had captured them and held them till they piped sitting in my hand. I had watched the leaf-cutters and followed them to their nests in an old rail, or under a stone. I see that I early had an interest in the wild life about me that my brothers did not have. I was a natural observer from childhood, had a quick, sure eye and ear, and an eager curiosity. I loved to roam the ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus

... the narrow stile that entered the lane from a meadow—a mere rail thrust across a gap. The gates, set in deep recesses—short lanes themselves cut through the mounds—were rotten and decayed, so as to scarcely hold together, and not to be moved without care. Hawthorn branches on each side pushed forward ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies

... a house that was covered with plaster marked off to look like great stones, its pitiful pretence laid bare, the slates gone and the rooms gone, the plaster all pitted with shrapnel. Near it lay an iron railing, a hand-rail blown there from the railway bridge; a shrapnel bullet had passed through its twisted stem as though it had gone through butter. And beside the hand-rail lay one of the great steel supports of the bridge that had floated there upon some flaming draught; the end of it bent and ...
— Unhappy Far-Off Things • Lord Dunsany

... standing. The larger trees he had girdled and killed, in order that their foliage should not cast a shade. He had then built a log cabin, plastering its chinks with clay, and had set up a tall zigzag rail fence around the scene of his havoc, to keep the pigs and cattle out. Finally, he had irregularly planted the intervals between the stumps and trees with Indian corn, which grew among the chips; and there he dwelt ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James

... gaunt old woman got up. Harry Esmond recollected to the end of his life that figure, with the brocade dress and the white night-rail, and the gold-clocked red stockings, and white red-heeled shoes sitting up in the bed, and stepping down from it. The trunks were ready packed for departure in her ante-room, and the horses ready harnessed in the stable: about all which the captain seemed to know, by ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... the war footing; trains were ready, timed according to an elaborate plan, to carry them Rhinewards; provisions and stores were sent forward, ohne Hast, ohne Rast, as the Germans say; and so perfect were the plans on rail, river, and road, that none of those blocks occurred which frequently upset the plans of the French. Thus, by dint of plodding preparation, a group of federal States gained a decisive advantage over a centralised Empire ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose

... narrow road through forests, and clearings, and little settlements, and villages, arrived just at nightfall at the home of my friends. It was a small, unpainted, wooden house, standing near the road. Back of it were barns and sheds, and I saw cattle and sheep grazing. The zigzag rail fence common to the region surrounded the cleared lots in sight, and in front of the house, across the road, were the wild woods. A wood-thrush, or veery, was pouring out his thrilling, liquid notes as we arrived. A white woman and a large, black, shaggy dog came out of the house ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various

... to surpass others. If we seek ever to surpass ourselves, we are moving on a uniform line of progress, that gives a harmonious unifying to our growth in all its parts. Daniel Morrell, at one time President of the Cambria Rail Works, that employed 7,000 men and made a rail famed throughout the world, was asked the secret of the great success of the works. "We have no secret," he said, "but this,— we always try to beat our last batch of rails." Competition is good, but it has its danger side. ...
— The Majesty of Calmness • William George Jordan

... passage way from one side of the shaft bottom to the other. Slopes and mechanical haulage ways used as traveling ways by persons employed in a mine shall be made of a sufficient width to give not less than three feet of space between the rib and adjacent rail of track to permit persons to pass moving cars with safety. If found impracticable to make such slopes or mechanical haulage ways of sufficient width as provided, refuge holes not less than six feet in width and clearing ...
— Mining Laws of Ohio, 1921 • Anonymous

... wings for the first time, the wings with which to soar into that mad, merry, elusive and called Romance. Ay, her wings! but her power also! that sweet, subtle power of the woman: the yoke which men love, rail at, and love again, the yoke that enslaves them and gives them ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... power directed a stream of water near the roots among his mother's Fuci,' said Lucy, rather hurt. 'He had fastened up his horse quite securely, and nobody could have guessed that Maurice could have opened that gate to cross the bridge, far less have climbed up the rail to the horse's back. I never shall forget my fright, when we heard the creature's feet, and Mr. Cavendish Dusautoy began ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge

... shut off by a five-foot wainscot partition, surmounted by a waved iron rail, at one end of the stable, and on approaching this enclosure Vixen was saluted with sundry grunts and snorting noises, which seemed ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon

... later the cart swept away from the house at a gait which pained the respectable neighborhood. The big horse plunged through the air, his ears laid flat toward his tail; the cart careened sickeningly; the face of the servant clutching at the rail in the rear was smeared with pallor as they pirouetted around curves on one wheel—to him it seemed they skirted the corners and Death simultaneously—and the speed of their going made a strong wind in ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington

... on the rail-roads near Philadelphia. The distance of 16-1/2 miles was performed by one of them going in an hour and thirteen minutes, returning (laden both ways) in an hour and eight minutes. The last mile was done ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 20, No. 567, Saturday, September 22, 1832. • Various

... humble student of this subject, I may say that I have been looking these facts in the face earnestly enough for more than twenty years, and that I am about as certain that they can only be explained by ice, as I am that my having got home by rail can ...
— Town Geology • Charles Kingsley

... is short, and we must drive to the station. Say what you will about the Russian, there is a thing that he certainly knows how to do. He knows how to travel by rail. One has a great many preconceived ideas of the Russian and his ways. One is always reminded that he is a barbarian, that he is ignorant, that he is dirty. He is possibly a barbarian in one way, that he can differentiate good from bad, real ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... humble opinion it is due to Church influence. We all know the effect on our social life of our churches. Among Catholics all men have always been on equal footing at the Communion rail. Catholics would be unworthy of their name, i.e. Catholic or universal ...
— History of Negro Soldiers in the Spanish-American War, and Other Items of Interest • Edward A. Johnson

... himself straightway wrestling with the problem of present safety. If Miss Farnham had recognized him, his chances of escape had suddenly narrowed down to flight, immediate and speedy. He must leave the Belle Julie at the next landing and endeavor to make his way north by wagon-road or rail, or by ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde

... for George Stephenson; and George Stephenson himself had been working at the subject for many years before he even reached the first stage of realized endeavour. As early as 1814 he constructed his first locomotive at Killingworth colliery; it was not until 1822 that he laid the first rail of his first large line, the Stockton ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen

... of title-duplication has a bearing, though a remote one, on titles that are similar yet not identical, as when Artcraft releases "Wolves of the Rail" (with William S. Hart) and Triangle puts out "Wolves of the Border" (with Roy Stewart). Perhaps there is no valid objection to such similarity, which can be called imitation only when the themes are more ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds

... Yet he didn't rail at fate. He had learned what fate could do to him, and he had learned to take its blows with a strange fatalism and composure. Besides, would he not have the joy of her presence for many days to come? Their adventure had just begun: weeks would pass before she ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall

... to fume and rail at us, and I sat listening with a bored air, an idea flashed upon my mind, and, acting upon it on the spur of the moment, I suddenly laid a friendly ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan

... in a hovel, in the midst of a small patch of potatoes and Indian corn, which his master had given him on setting him free. He would come to us, with his hoe in his hand, and as we sat perched, like a row of swallows, on the rail of the fence, in the mellow twilight of a summer evening, he would tell us such fearful stories, accompanied by such awful rollings of his white eyes, that we were almost afraid of our own footsteps as we returned home ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving

... frequently vote alike—as the magnet draws the needle they go to the polls together. But women are not coerced. If a man were known to coerce his wife's vote I believe he would be ridden out of town on a rail with a coat of tar and feathers. Women's legal rights have been improved in Colorado since they obtained the ballot, and there are now no civil distinctions. Equal suffrage tends to make political affairs better, purer and more desirable for all who take ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various

... the delicate structure of the long nebul they appear to act as barriers, causing the stars to heap themselves on one side. The stars are two, three, or four times as numerous on one side of the nebul as on the other. These nebul, as far as appearance goes, might be likened to rail fences, or thin hedges, against which the wind is driving drifts of powdery snow, which, while scattered plentifully all around, tends to bank itself on the leeward side of the obstruction. The imagination is at a loss to account for these extraordinary ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss

... window. He explained hurriedly about the disappearance of Griscom. He also asked the towerman to telegraph ahead to Dover for a substitute engineer. The operator said he would have some men come down from the first station back on the route on a handcar to search for the missing rail-roader. ...
— Ralph on the Engine - The Young Fireman of the Limited Mail • Allen Chapman

... memorable 17th of June; but he was then, as brigadier-general, the ranking officer present, until brave Warren appeared upon the scene. The latter was discovered by Putnam just as he was wheeling about after meeting and posting the gallant Colonel Stark and his New Hampshire reenforcements behind the rail fence and grass breastwork, where they gave such a good account of themselves that day. Turning about, he saw the slender figure of the newly-made major-general before him, a sword at his side, but ...
— "Old Put" The Patriot • Frederick A. Ober

... on the Eastern model, the benches must be framed of wood, permanently fixed, and covered with mattresses kept in their places by a wooden fillet, as Fig. 20. Above the couch thus formed it is well to stretch a dado of Indian matting, affixed above to a moulded rail. ...
— The Turkish Bath - Its Design and Construction • Robert Owen Allsop

... unanswered. He ran to the tall fence, placed his hand on the top rail, and vaulted lightly over it. Then he clasped the hand of the larger man, and ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand

... feet; she smiled and gave him a kick which filled him with pleasure. Not long afterward occurred the episode which so profoundly affected his imagination. He was playing with his sisters at hide-and-seek and had carefully hidden himself behind the dresses on a clothes-rail in the Countess's bedroom. At this moment the Countess suddenly entered the house and ascended the stairs, followed by a lover, and the child, who dared not betray his presence, saw the countess sink down on a sofa and begin ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... Gascoigne, kept my temper miraculously. But there was an impertinent puppy of an ensign, a partisan of the lieutenant-colonel, who wanted, I'm convinced, to have the credit of fighting a duel for the colonel, and he one day said, in Captain Henry's hearing, that 'it was no wonder some men should rail against ministerial influence, who had no friends to look to, and were men of no family.'—'Do you mean that for me, sir?' said Henry. 'Judge for yourself, sir.' Poor Henry judged ill, and challenged the ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth

... returned to his damp vigil. Leaning over the wet wooden rail, he drew a little diagram on the back of an envelope and worked out some figures. Then he listened once more, the slight frown upon his forehead deepening. Finally he tore up his sketch and made his way to the doctor's room. The doctor was seated at his desk and glanced ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... traveller accepted a drink of water in a blue tumbler, brought by the meek wife. The galerie just now was scattered with the husband's appliances for making Perique tobacco into "carats"—the carat-press. Its small, iron-ratcheted, wooden windlass extended along the top rail of the balustrade across one of the galerie's ends. Lines of half-inch grass rope, for wrapping the carats into diminished bulk and solid shape, lay along under foot. Beside one of the doors, in deep hickory baskets, were the parcels of cured tobacco swaddled in cotton cloths and ready ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable

... Fringe fall off of Mittie May? He tried to. At first he sought only to stay on; then after a bit he sought to get off; he couldn't. The cause for his staying on was revealed when Mittie May took the first of those mental hazards of hers. As she rose grandly into space to clear the imagined top-rail of the imagined panel and with hind heels drawn well in under her, descended and continued on her circling way, a keen-eyed spectator, all bent double though he was, alongside the ring, and beating himself in the short ribs, caught a flashing ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb

... side of the New Forest. The directions given to him by Jacob were not forgotten, and before it was noon he found himself at the gate of the keeper's house. Dismounting, and hanging the bridle of the pony over the rail he walked through a small garden, neatly kept but, so early in the year, not over gay, except that the crocus and snow drops were peeping. He rapped at the door with his knuckles, and a girl of about fourteen, very ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat

... except room, heat and water (and the heat costs extra); there is no sanitation for any one at any price; every guest dumps all his discarded rubbish over the balcony rail into the courtyard, to be trodden and wheeled under foot and help build the aroma. But the guests provide a picture without price that with the very first glimpse ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy

... snarls at all above it, without even the beast's courage to bite; Folly, that knows not the substance of Freedom, but loves the glitter of its name; Fear, that falters; Crime, that seeks in licentiousness an excuse; Disappointment, only craving occasion to rail; Hatred; Sourness, boasting of zeal, but only venting the blackness of rancour and evil passion,—all these make our adherents, and give our foes the handle and the privilege to scorn and to despise. But man chooses the object, and Fate only furnishes ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... some worthy incorrigibles of the former party of order, "be indignant, rail, stigmatize, disavow,—'tis all the same to us; long live stability! All these things put together constitute, ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo

... early naval life I came into curious accidental contact with just such a person as Marryat described. I was still at the Academy, within a year of graduation, and had been granted a few days' leave at Christmas. Returning by rail, there seated himself alongside me a gentleman who proved to be a lieutenant from the flag-ship of the Home Squadron, going to Washington with despatches. Becoming known to each other, he began to question me as to what new radicalisms were being fostered in Annapolis. "Are ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan

... they are. This is the way man and woman have been made by nature, by a thousand centuries of heredity, by a thousand centuries of environment. The differences lie in biological roots, and it is futile to fight and rail against nature and biology. The proper thing to do is to recognize the facts and make the best of them. To act the part of the ostrich, deliberately to ignore facts which are not pleasant, may be ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson

... still, and the tiniest sounds were exaggerated: a board creaking at the head of the stairs, and creaking again, the stair-rail creaking, the ghost of a faint little sigh; tiny and intermittent sounds, but the silence became a listening hush because of them: listening harder and harder. At last a sound broke it: the doorbell, rung three times, one ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton

... The firing dwindled from an uproar to a last vindictive popping. As the smoke slowly eddied away, the youth saw that the charge had been repulsed. The enemy were scattered into reluctant groups. He saw a man climb to the top of the fence, straddle the rail, and fire a parting shot. The waves had receded, leaving bits of ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane

... keen to get back to England and have a whack at the Huns, tried to board our ship, sometimes by a ruse, more often by fighting. One saw some very pretty fist work that night as he leant across the rail, wondering whether he'd ever reach the other side. There were rumours of German warships waiting to catch us in mid-ocean. Somewhere towards midnight the would-be stowaways gave up their attempt to force ...
— The Glory of the Trenches • Coningsby Dawson



Words linked to "Rail" :   railway line, architecture, crake, rail off, railroad line, fulminate, balusters, rail line, third rail, rail fence, divide, railway, wading bird, wader, family Rallidae, rail technology, rail in, guardrail, complain, supply, banister, coot, provide, runway, barrier, revile, hold in, balustrade, snake-rail fence, kvetch, repose, handrail, plain, weka, track, vituperate, sound off, maori hen, plate rail, lay, bar, takahe, shout, Notornis mantelli, train, tramway, railway system, railroad track, safety rail, vilify, confine, render, split rail, bannister, fence rail, railroad, inveigh, taffrail, quetch, towel rail, wood hen, streetcar track, blackguard



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com