"Anvil" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... stalwart fellow who had just been heaving the sledge-hammer with the seeming powers of Vulcan himself, and who chanced to be near Robin when he paused to rest and mop the streaming perspiration from his brow, while a well-matched brother took his place at the anvil. ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... the smith, He that smoothed with the hammer Him that smote on the anvil; Saying of the solder, It is good; And fixing the idol with nails, ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... untying the first knot they would have a gentle and favorable wind, at the second knot a stronger wind, and at the third knot a violent and dangerous gale. He says, moreover, that the Bothnians, striking on an anvil hard blows with a hammer, upon a frog or a serpent of brass, fall down in a swoon, and during this swoon they learn what passes in ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... good, forbearing, timid, inquisitive, and addicted to sleep," said Gamin to me; "he was fond to excess of lock-making, and he concealed himself from the Queen and the Court to file and forge with me. In order to convey his anvil and my own backwards and forwards we were obliged to use a thousand stratagems, the history of which would: never end." Above the King's and Gamin's forges and anvils was an, observatory, erected upon a platform covered with ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... legend inscribed on the cross at Leeds. Volund, who is the same mysterious person as our Wayland Smith, is seen carrying off a swan-maiden. At his feet are his hammer, anvil, bellows, and pincers. The cross was broken to pieces in order to make way for the building of the old Leeds church hundreds of years ago, but the fragments have been pieced together, and we can see the swan-maiden carried above the head of Volund, her wings hanging ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... man on the ground with his face downwards, the officers of justice sent away two of their number, who speedily returned with a blacksmith's anvil and forehammer. On this they placed one of their victim's ankles, and Flaggan now saw, with a sickening heart, that they were about to break it with the ponderous hammer. One blow sufficed to crush the bones in ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... therewith, All demonstration seems to me obtuse." And then I heard: "The ancient and the new Postulates, that to thee are so conclusive, Why dost thou take them for the word divine?" And I: "The proof, which shows the truth to me, Are the works subsequent, whereunto Nature Ne'er heated iron yet, nor anvil beat." 'Twas answered me: "Say, who assureth thee That those works ever were? the thing itself We wish to prove, nought else to thee affirms it." "Were the world to Christianity converted," I said, "withouten miracles, this ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... spoke very fair old-fashioned English, with the Yorkshire tone and turn. His walk was rather plodding, and his movements slow and stiff; but in communion with his violin they were free enough, and the more delicate for the strength that was in them; at the anvil they were as supple as powerful. On his face dwelt an expression that was not to be read by the indifferent—a waiting in the midst of work, as of a man to whom the sense of the temporary was always present, but present with the constant reminder that, just therefore, work must be as good ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... linen called Hollands is made in Juelich, and only bleached, stamped, and sold by the Dutch," says Buesching. A country in our days which is shrouded at short intervals with the due canopy of coal-smoke, and loud with sounds of the anvil and ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... my seat till he finished it. There was no oratory about it, in the ordinary sense of that word; no graces of elocution. It was mighty thoughts radiating off from his heated mind like the sparkles from the glowing steel on his own anvil, getting on as they come out what clothing of language they might, and thus having on the most appropriate and expressive imaginable. Not a waste word, nor a wanting one. And he stood and delivered himself in a simplicity and earnestness of ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... and who would have torn down stone walls with their bare hands at his merest words, as they would have faced the barons' steel with naked breast. At such times men left their tasks—the shoemaker his last, the smith his anvil, the crooked tailor his bench—to follow the northern monk to the Capitol, or to some church where he was to speak to them; and after the men came the women, and after the women the children, all drawn along by the mysterious attraction which they could neither understand nor resist. The tramping ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... addresses, on his window-sill, where, happening to be seven in number, they were almost a model of Monypenny, which is within hail of Thrums, but round the corner from it, and so has ways of its own. With the next clang on the anvil the middle letter fell flat, and now the likeness to Monypenny ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... then started in my buggy alone to hold meetings at the different stations. At Elderslie one was held at the woolshed, where I had a bale of wool as the platform. At Vindex, the meeting was held in the blacksmith's shop, I standing on the anvil block of wood, ...
— Reminiscences of Queensland - 1862-1869 • William Henry Corfield
... burials, christenings, or bridals; wherever and whenever human creatures met each other, there was ever to be found the fierce wrangle of Remonstrant and Contra-Remonstrant, the hissing of red-hot theological rhetoric, the pelting of hostile texts. The blacksmith's iron cooled on the anvil, the tinker dropped a kettle half mended, the broker left a bargain unclinched, the Scheveningen fisherman in his wooden shoes forgot the cracks in his pinkie, while each paused to hold high converse with friend or foe on fate, free- will, ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... disagreeable duty to record here, that the acts of Benjamin now became violent; for he darted his sledge-hammer violently on the anvil of Mr. Doolittles countenance, and the place became in an instant a scene of tumult and confusion. The crowd rushed in a dense circle around the spot, while some ran to the court room to give the alarm, and one ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... of the fell on three sides, and having a roof of thatch. The glare of the fire, now rising, now falling, streamed through the open door. It sent a long vista of light through the blank and pulsating haze. The vibrations of the anvil were all but the only sounds on the air; the alternate thin clink of the smith's hand-hammer and the thick thud of the striker's sledge echoed in unseen ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... According to the tradition, it was safer for him to strike on his head than on his shins. Certainly he was not badly injured, and if reduced to extremity he might have let out his head for use as a blacksmith's anvil. ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic
... furnace blazes; the anvil rings; the busy wheels whirl round. 2. As Caesar loved me, I weep for him; as he was fortunate, I rejoice at it; as he was valiant, I honor him; but, as he was ambitious, I slew him. 3. He drew a picture of the sufferings ...
— Graded Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... fiery old Belleisle on that, Pompadour meditates great things this Year,—Invasions of England; stronger German Armies; better German Plans, and slashings home upon Hanover itself, or the vital point;—and flatters herself, and her poor Louis, that there is on the anvil, for 1759, such a French Campaign as will perhaps astonish Pitt and another insolent King. Very fixed, fell and feminine is the Pompadour's humor in this matter. Nor is the Czarina's less so; but more, if possible; unappeasable except ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... this army was justly thought the equal of twice its own number of raw yeomanry, suddenly called to the field from the anvil, the workshop, or the plough. Its strongest arm was its artillery; its weakest, its ...
— Burgoyne's Invasion of 1777 - With an outline sketch of the American Invasion of Canada, 1775-76. • Samuel Adams Drake
... find an acquaintance in this neighborhood, but a chase makes quick fellowship. I happened to hear of it at the Anvil Tavern,—am on my way to the Rising Sun; so, you see, if the hunt goes down Tuffkenamon, as is likely, it's so much of ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... up in a way to win them fame. When Earl Haakon's ship drew up beside that of Bue, two of the viking champions, Haavard the Hewer and Aslak Rock-skull, leaped on deck and made terrible havoc. In the end an Icelander picked up an anvil that was used to sharpen their spears and hurled it at Aslak, splitting his skull, while Haavard had both legs cut off. Yet the indomitable viking fought on, standing on ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... the "Colonel," so called for his willingness to place his advice at the service of any of the Allied Commanders-in-Chief, and Owd Jerry the smith, who knew how to keep silent, but whose opinion, when given, fell with the weight of his hammer on the anvil. He refuted his opponents by asking them questions, after the manner of Socrates. The subject of conversation was the village school-mistress, who had recently been placed in charge of some thirty children, and was winning golden opinions on ...
— Tales of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman
... worthy friend, For the lesson thou hast taught! Thus at the flaming forge of life Our fortunes must be wrought; Thus on its sounding anvil shaped Each ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... colleagues in the surf-boat which is taking them shoreward, and the ship is headed to the south. The expedition is important—yes, and it was much more important than Master Day imagined; for something more serious than profits on muslin and brocade was on the anvil ...
— The Story of Madras • Glyn Barlow
... from the high tree-tops, the garish street light would have kept it dim. The trees were silent and stirless, as quiet as the graves beneath them—more quiet; in fact; for there issued from a grated hole among the tombs the sound of an anvil, deep down and muffled, but unmistakably ringing, as if Governor Winthrop were forging chains in his vault. Then came a rush, a deadened roar, and an emanation of dank gaseous breath, such as the dead ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... live. He was accordingly, at his own request led into the smithy, multitudes flocking around to tender him their kindest offices, or to witness the process of release; and, having laid down his head upon the anvil, the smith lost no time in seizing and poising his goodly forehammer. "Will I come sair on, minister?" exclaimed the considerate man of iron, in at the brink of the pot. "As sair as ye like," was the minister's answer; "better a chap i' the chafts than die for want of breath." Thus permitted, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 547, May 19, 1832 • Various
... Short, the tanner; Nick Anvil, the blacksmith; Patty, the weaver's daughter—and the rest of 'em; come here, Patty, make a curtchey to the old soger—[PATTY comes forward.]—a pretty girl! I could have had her, but she wanted edication—she wanted the airs and graces, as ...
— She Would Be a Soldier - The Plains of Chippewa • Mordecai Manuel Noah
... glayve, and retourne agayne. Thanne he rode a lytell forthe, thyderwarde, and anone he sawe where his master layn upon the erthe, bytwene foure men, layenge on him strokes, as they wolde have stryken on a stethey (anvil); and than the squyer was so affreyed, that he durst go no farther; for he sawe well he could nat helpe his mayster. Therefore he retourned as fast as he myght: so there the sayd knyghte was slayne. And the knyghtes, that were at the ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... Sah-luma!—marvellous Sah-luma! twaddler Sah-luma! what a brain box is thine! ... How full of dislocated word-puzzles and similes gone mad! Now, as I live, expect no mercy from me this time!".. and he shook his head threateningly,—"For if the public news sheet will serve me as mine anvil, I will so pound thee in pieces with the sledge-hammer of my criticism, that, by the Ship of the Sun! ... for once Al-Kyns shall be moved to laughter at thee! Mark me, good tuner-up of tinkling foolishness! ... I will ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... Brigitte had not taken this attitude of your godmother, whom she has always found supple to her will, as a personal insult to herself. Very painful explanations, approaching at last to violence, have taken place. Thuillier, placed between the hammer and the anvil, has been unable to stop the affair; on the contrary, he has, without intending it, made matters worse, till they have now arrived at such a point that Mademoiselle Brigitte is packing her trunks ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... which mark the variety of moods which (p. 114) swept over him during the summer and autumn of 1789, there was also a continual succession of songs on the anvil in preparation for Johnson's Museum. This work of song-making, begun during his second winter in Edinburgh, was carried on with little intermission during all the Ellisland period. The songs were on all kinds of subjects, and of all degrees of excellence, but hardly one, even the ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... swearing. The people of color who were in there were slaves, there without crime, but for safe keeping, while the whites were some of the most abandoned characters living. The keeper took me up to the anvil block and fastened a chain about my leg, which I had to drag after me both day and night during three months. My labor was sawing stone; my food was coarse corn bread and beef shanks and cows heads with pot liquor, and a very scanty ...
— Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave, Written by Himself • Henry Bibb
... so small and so great: small in the eyes of the world, great in his own estimation. When the tones burst from him like sparks from an anvil, he was a god. When he stood in the dark court behind the City Theatre waiting for the final chorus of "Fidelio" to penetrate the wall and reach his grateful ears, he was an outcast. Fountains of music rustled all about him. He looked into the eyes of the children and there was melody; ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... the pantheon, but he was indispensable to the dynasty, and to none more than his father and mother, who were often unkind to him; he had his smithy in Olympus in the vicinity of the gods, and the marvellous creations of his art were shaped on an anvil, the hammer of which was plied by 20 bellows that worked at his bidding; in later traditions he had his workshop elsewhere, and the Cyclops for his servants, employed in manufacturing thunderbolts for Zeus; he was wedded to Aphrodite, whom he caught playing false with Ares, and whom he ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... generally with much degradation of their impressiveness, as in the paltry fables of Ulysses receiving the winds in bags from AEolus, and of the Cyclops hammering lightning sharp at the ends, on an anvil.[29] Of course, you will here and there find feeble evidences of a higher sensibility, chiefly, I think, in Plato, AEschylus, Aristophanes, and Virgil. Homer, though in the epithets he applies to landscape ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... those, Of deep responsive chant; But see how yonder goes, Dew-drunk, with giddy slant, Yon Shelley-lark, And hark! Him on the giddy brink Of pearly heaven His fairy anvil clink. ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson, an Elegy; And Other Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... the Porta a Pinti. Then they went into the city and had a house in the parish of S. Ambrogio, in which church Francesco di Domenico made a tomb for himself and his family in 1470. They had arms; at first they were a goldsmith's anvil (tasso or tassetto), and above a ball or heap of silver. Afterwards the field of the shield was divided, and they added in the upper part two little badgers (tassi) at the side of the anvil, and put below the keys of S. Peter, crossed, ...
— Intarsia and Marquetry • F. Hamilton Jackson
... tube (fig. 18) has a similarly shaped body to the wireless electric tube, but the internal construction differs; it is fitted with a striker, below which is a percussion cap on a hollow brass anvil, and the tube is filled ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... which, called the Hanging Rocks, huge masses of stone hang suspended over your head. At the side of this defile, is a recess, called the Devil's Blacksmith's Shop. It contains a rock shaped like an anvil, with a small inky current running near it, and quantities of coarse stalagmite scattered about, precisely like blacksmith's cinders, called slag. In another place, you pass a square rock, covered with beautiful dog's tooth spar, called ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... wheelbarrows; not a man standing still; not a man with empty hands; every man picking up something, and running to put it down somewhere else, as in a play; and, all the while, "Clink! clink! clink!" ringing above the other sounds,—the strokes of hundreds of hammers, like the "Anvil Chorus." ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... his tottering affairs. "Inevitable, then? We are over with it, then?" One may fancy Friedrich's reflections. But he showed nothing of them to anybody; in a few hours, had his mind composed, and new plans on the anvil. On the morrow of that Austrian Joy-Firing,—morrow, or some day close on it (ought to have been dated, but is not),—there went from him, to Magdeburg, the Order: "Have me such and such quantities of Siege-Artillery in a state of readiness." [Tempelhof, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... "understanding" of man: the Vernunft (Reason) and Verstand (Understanding) of the Germans, it all turned upon these, if you could well understand them,—which you couldn't. For the rest, Mr. Coleridge had on the anvil various Books, especially was about to write one grand Book On the Logos, which would help to bridge the chasm for us. So much appeared, however: Churches, though proved false (as you had imagined), ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... most singular noise, echoing at intervals amongst the rocks. We soon discovered the cause; in a hollow of the rocks I saw a very hot fire, which Jack was blowing through a cane, whilst Fritz was turning amidst the embers a bar of iron. When it was red hot, they laid it on an anvil I had brought from the ship, and struck it alternately with hammers to ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... of Nature's family. Yet must I not give Nature all; thy Art, My gentle Shakespeare, must enjoy a part. For though the poet's matter nature be, His art doth give the fashion; and that he{9} Who casts to write a living line, must sweat (Such as thine are) and strike the second heat Upon the Muses' anvil, turn the same, And himself with it, that he thinks to frame; Or for the laurel he may gain to scorn; For a good poet's made, as well as born. And such wert thou! Look, how the father's face Lives in his issue, even so the race Of Shakespeare's ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... fire to me too, but it is the fire of a smith's forge. The place where it is looks half like a room and half like a cavern. It is all of rocks, but there is the forge and there are the chimney and the anvil and the bellows and ...
— The Wagner Story Book • Henry Frost
... of two writers. One of these could not get anything published at all except in the toy magazines, which paid little and late and died early. The other writer could get published, but not sold. Both were young and needed only to pound their irons on the anvil to get them hot, but they blamed the world for being cold to true art. In time they would make the sparks fly and would be in their turn assailed as mere blacksmiths by the next line of younger apprentices. They were at present in the same stage as any other new ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... truth, the circumstance that a man of genius could reperuse this slight effusion at two different periods of his life, was a sufficient authority, at least for an author, to return it once more to the anvil." ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... first demands a sword. Two, that arc given him by Regin, prove worthless, and he forges a new one from the pieces of his father's sword, which his mother had preserved. With this he easily splits the anvil and cuts in two a flake of wool, floating down the Rhine. He first avenges the death of his father, and then sets off with Regin to attack the dragon Fafnir. At the advice of the former Sigurd digs a ...
— The Nibelungenlied • Unknown
... theologian of a different type from his New England predecessors. He was of a temper little disposed to accept either methods or results as a local tradition, and inclined rather to prefer that which had been "hammered out on his own anvil." And yet, while very free in manifesting his small respect for the "logicking" by syllogistic processes which had been the pride of the theological chair and even the pulpit in America, and while declining the use of current ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... of the city, Brahmans, Vaisyas, Kshatras bold, Men from stall and loom and anvil gathered thick, the ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... of minutes neither spoke, and his head was throbbing with anvil-beats. Twice she started to speak, but stopped each time as though distrustful ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... had the dry-shampoo it was in need of. But as for me, I'm like an old horse-shoe with its calks worn off. The Master-Blacksmith of Life should poke me deep into His fires and fling me on His anvil and make me over! ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... in their later pursuits. Elihu Burritt says he found hard labour NECESSARY to enable him to study with effect; and more than once he gave up school-teaching and study, and, taking to his leather-apron again, went back to his blacksmith's forge and anvil for his health of ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... ever in their office; and the traveller who passes that way, if he lays his ear close to the mouth of the cavern, may hear a ghastly noise of iron chains and brazen caldrons, the loud strokes of the hammer, and the ringing sound of the anvil, intermixed with the pants and groans of the workmen, enough to unsettle the brain and confound the faculties of him that for any time shall listen ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... Gods! And she had also implored the brothers of Diogenes to continue their anvil chorus! This took the last stitch of starch from my manly bosom. Spiritless and spineless I bore all things, believed ...
— Our Next-Door Neighbors • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... can—at least, as musical as his other performances. Not that we counsel dilatory and piecemeal composition. The thought must be struck off in the passion of the moment; the sword-blade must go red-hot to the anvil, and be forged in a few seconds: true; but after the forging, long and weary polishing and grinding must follow, before your sword-blade will cut. And melody is what makes poetry cut; what gives it its life, its power, its magic influence, on the hearts of men. It must ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various
... as though opening and shutting in a tempest. The sharp crack of rifle-shots showed that the snipers were busy on both sides, and once I stood in a deep pool, with the water up to my knees, listening to what sounded like the tap-tap-tap of invisible blacksmiths playing a tattoo on an anvil. ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... from the outside, this angle of the forge would always seem weird and even mysterious even when the furnace was blazing and the sparks flying from the anvil, beneath the smith's powerful blows, or when—as at present—the fires were extinguished and this part of the shed, innocent of ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... Cylinder, drives the Air out of the Cylinder through the Pipe: Two of these Trunks or Cylinders are placed so nigh together, that a Man standing between them may work them both at once alternately, one with each Hand. They have neither Vice nor Anvil, but a great hard Stone or a piece of an old Gun, to hammer upon: yet they will perform their work making both common Utensils and Iron-works about Ships to admiration. They work altogether with Charcoal. Every Man almost is a Carpenter, for they can work with the Ax and Adds. Their Ax ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... of iron thy bones shall environ, To brass-links the veins of thy frame Shall stiffen, and the glow of thy manhood shall grow Like the anvil that melts not in flame! But wert thou the mould of a champion bold For God and his truth and his law? Oh, then, though the fence of each limb and each sense Is broken—each gem with a flaw— Be comforted thou! For rising in air Thy flight shall the clarion ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... saw round bars formed by a knotched hammer and anvil. There I saw a bar of about half an inch, or more, square cut with shears worked by water, and then beaten hot into a thinner bar. The hammers all worked, as they were, by water, acting upon small bodies, moved very quick, as quick as by ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... in a great voice, like one who would startle a creature out of mania, "you will write a deed in your legal manner granting these lands to your brother's child. And after that"—his words were like the blows of a hammer on an anvil—"I will give you until daybreak to vanish out of our sight and hearing—through the gap in the mountains into Maryland on your horse, as you say your brother David went, or into the abandoned cistern in the ancient orchard where he lies under the horse that you ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... that I had not charged any of them anything, and had given them a marriage certificate with a seal on it, made out of a Mexican dollar; and had given a treat and fired off the anvil. Still, although the Pope of Rome was beyond the jurisdiction of even the Alcalde of Tubac, I could not see the way open for a restoration ...
— Building a State in Apache Land • Charles D. Poston
... the tempo so as to include the rhythmic beat of the hammer with the other instruments in his band. The blacksmith looked, smiled and let his hammer fall in consonance with the beat of the boy's hand, and for some moments there was glorious harmony between anvil and mouth organ and the band invisible. At the store door across the street the band paused long enough simply to give and receive an answering salute from the storekeeper, who smiled upon his boy as he marched ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... Out of my doors, knave, if thou likest it not. I cry you mercy! is your ears so fine? I tell thee, knave, these get when I do sleep; I will not have my Anvil stand for thee. ...
— Cromwell • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... Marshall's school, he could risk no chances. In doubt, the quickest way to clear one's mind is to discuss, and Evarts deliberately forced discussion. Day after day, driving, dining, walking he provoked Adams to dispute his positions. He needed an anvil, he said, to ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... gentlemen's horses. Now that's a thing that wouldn't happen in London, because of their interfering ways; but blacksmith he lies up aloft and sleeps as quiet as a lamb. Once when he had a bad head he shouted down to them not to make so much noise, and in the morning he found an old guinea left on the anvil as an apology. He wears it on his watch-chain now. But I must get on with my story; if I start telling you about the queer happenings ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... Is not a time for settling or admitting. Mighty things are on the anvil. The house Of Hapsburg must wax powerful; what the Father Gloriously began, the Son must forward: This people is a stone of stumbling, which One way or t'other must ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... any other mark than his own. From his father and his forefathers he inherited his trade, which, in his turn, he will hand over to his son—a hard-working, honest, and sturdy man, the clank of whose hammer and anvil may be heard ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... ourselves and this dreadful deity; to have a priest to intercede for us with the god of life and death; to send an ambassador to the fire. That priest is the poker. Made of a material more merciless and warlike than the other instruments of domesticity, hammered on the anvil and born itself in the flame, the poker is strong enough to enter the burning fiery furnace, and, like the holy children, not be consumed. In this heroic service it is often battered and twisted, but is the more honourable for it, like ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... mean it: with tin and solder, and then I try brass and turning. I have a regular workshop, you know, with a small forge and anvil. Can ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... had hammered at a former period; with the wood thus procured they prepared the charcoal which their labour demanded. Everything is in readiness; the bellows puff until the coal is excited to a furious glow; the metal, hot, pliant, and ductile, is laid on the anvil, round which stands the Cyclop group, their hammers upraised; down they descend successively, one, two, three, the sparks are scattered on every side. ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... themselves as slender Damascus blades, nimble and flexible; whereas these Britons would have been, perhaps, as sturdy broadswords. Yet every one remembers that story of Saladin and Richard trying their respective blades; how gallant Richard clove an anvil in twain, or something quite as ponderous, and Saladin elegantly severed a cushion; so that the two monarchs were even—each excelling in his way—though, unfortunately for my simile, in a patriotic point of view, Richard whipped Saladin's armies ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... in the capacity of blacksmiths, and condemned them to the anvil. This arose from the chief Cyclopian Deity being called Acmon, and Pyracmon. He was worshipped under the former title in Phrygia; where was a city and district called Acmonia, mentioned by Alexander [604]Polyhistor. The Amazonians paid the like reverence: ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant
... seeking to impose its domination. "In the struggle between Nationalities," writes Prince Buelow,[1] in defence of his Polish policy, putting into a cruder form the philosophy of Wilamowitz, "one nation is the hammer and the other the anvil; one is the victor and the other the vanquished. It is a law of life and development in history that where two national civilisations ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... considerable distance above and below the iron, was a mass of putrefaction, the most loathsome of any wound he had ever witnessed on any living creature. The slave lay on his back on the floor, with his leg on an anvil which sat also on the floor, one man had a chisel used for splitting iron, and another struck it with a sledge, to drive it between the ends of the hoop and separate it so that it might be taken off. Mr. Lyman said that the man swung the sledge over his shoulders as if splitting iron, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... Edinboro', by a company of Italians, which gave astonishing proofs of their intelligence. They were kept in a large box, and each came forth at the command of the owner, seeming perfectly to understand its duty. They had been taught to beat a drum, turn a spit, strike upon an anvil, turn a coffee roaster, ...
— Minnie's Pet Cat • Madeline Leslie
... Sherman went back at once, resisting the urgent invitation of General Banks, whose military duties seem to have been somewhat hampered by civil calls, to remain over the 4th of March and participate in the inauguration of a civil government for Louisiana, in which the Anvil Chorus was to be played by all the bands in the Army of the Gulf, the church bells rung, and cannons fired ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... their truth;" I answer'd: "Nature did not make for these The iron hot, or on her anvil mould them." "Who voucheth to thee of the works themselves," Was the reply, "that they in very deed Are that they purport? None hath sworn so ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... systematically replacing the Mongolian culture. But the ignorance of this lower class of Russians is almost as noticeable as that of the natives themselves. As soon as we entered a village, the blacksmith left his anvil, the carpenter his bench, the storekeeper his counter, and the milkmaid her task. After our parade of the principal street, the crowd would gather round us at the station-house. All sorts of queries and ejaculations would pass among them. One would ask: "Are these gentlemen ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... spurs into my horse and hurled myself against him; then at the very moment my horse struck his with a tremendous shock, I brought down my iron whip-handle with all the force that was in me upon his head. The blow rang as if I had struck upon an anvil, while at the same moment he, without swerving, clutched my cloak with both hands. I could feel that they were bony, hard hands, armed with long, crooked, sharp talons like an eagle's, which pierced through my cloak into my flesh. Dropping my whip, ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... still maintain, 40 Legions of factious authors throng at once, Fool beckons fool, and dunce awakens dunce. To 'Hamilton's[84] the ready lies repair— Ne'er was lie made which was not welcome there— Thence, on maturer judgment's anvil wrought, The polish'd falsehood's into public brought. Quick-circulating slanders mirth afford; And reputation bleeds in every word. A critic was of old a glorious name, Whose sanction handed merit up to fame; 50 Beauties as well ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... to force her way through; the javelins rattled on her head like hammers on an anvil. She began to yell like ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... dwell; the story's known. the ringing of those plates on plates Still ringeth round the world— The clangor of that blacksmith's fray. The anvil-din Resounds this message ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... successful work. At the right hand of these two drawers named, running down to floor if need be, there can be a series of drawers for tools and materials. Now with these equipments, and some others, not herein named, such as vise, file block, bench stake or anvil, and a large variety of such tools as will accumulate, I am ready to give you my ideas regarding the cleaning and repairing of watches. First and foremost, do not undertake any job that you have any or considerable doubt but what you can do successfully, and never leave a job worse ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 664, September 22,1888 • Various
... upon pain of cursing, that Jesus, of His great mercy, should show some miracle who should be rightwise king. So in the greatest church of London there was seen against the high altar a great stone and in the midst thereof there was an anvil of steel, and therein stuck a fair sword, naked by the point, and letters of gold were written about the sword that said, "Whoso pulleth out this sword of this stone and anvil is rightwise ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... not? That is well, for you will never feel the crown on your brows, good uncle! You are ground between the Spanish hammer and the Bearnais anvil; there will soon be nothing left ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... like all partial parents, even thinks he feels toward his offspring; but observe his acts narrowly from first to last. He has a manufacturer's heart, with all his genius. He loves machinery—the sound of the mill, the anvil, the spinning-jenny, the sight of the ship upon the high-seas, or steamboat on the river, the roar of commerce, far more than the work of the husbandman. We are an agricultural people, we of the South and West—and especially we Southerners, with ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... over the middle of his shoulders. This was well-measured (?) to him, and it was not an overweight. His hand brought the circlet of red-yellow, as though it were a plate of red-gold, of refined gold smelted over the edge of an anvil, to his brow, as a sign of his charioteering, in distinction to ...
— The Cattle-Raid of Cualnge (Tain Bo Cualnge) • Unknown
... earthen jars, modeled with all the severity of the primitive cave-dweller, serve as receptacles. The grist-mill on Leap Frog River is busy from dawn till dusk; the forge rings with the music of hammer and anvil; a saw-mill in the heart of Dismal Forest hums its whining tune all day long. A noisy, determined engine, fashioned by mechanics out of material taken from the engine and boiler room of the Doraine provides the motive power for ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... night, in the house of the Immortals, resounded the clang of hammer on anvil as Hephaistus, the lame god, ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... bright—the high sun shines not so! The high sun sees not, on the earth, such fiery fearful show; The roof-ribs swart, the candent hearth, the ruddy lurid row Of smiths that stand, an ardent band, like men before the foe As, quivering through his fleece of flame, the sailing-monster slow Sinks on the anvil—all about the faces ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... once aroused our feelings run deep and strong. Every one is filled with this passion, with the soldier's ardor. But when the waters of the deluge shall have subsided, gladly will we return to the plow and to the anvil. ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... grievously with it through the knee. {85a} Then he said, "A cursed ungentle son-in-law, truly. I shall ever walk the worse for his rudeness, and shall ever be without a cure. This poisoned iron pains me like the bite of a gad-fly. Cursed be the smith who forged it, and the anvil whereon it was wrought! So ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 2 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... good anvil, let him deal sound blows on the irons for the pier, repeated and strong, and the ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... Hapsburgs; namely, the marriage, which was thought very probable and very near, of Napoleon with the sister of the Czar. Thus imprisoned between two vast empires, between that of the East and that of the West, as if between hammer and anvil, what would become of Austria, shorn of its territory and ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... minister for India—of a doubtful nature, couched in terms which seem to have aroused his resentment. From this moment, there can be no doubt that the Ameer's course was decided upon. He was between the hammer and the anvil and, as he could obtain no guarantee of assistance from England, he determined to throw himself into the arms ...
— For Name and Fame - Or Through Afghan Passes • G. A. Henty
... from the blacksmith up (or down) to the clergyman. You will see, for instance, that extraordinary linguist, the "learned blacksmith," who ought to have been a teacher of languages; and you may have seen lawyers, doctors and clergymen who were better fitted by nature for the anvil or ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... that must with theirs compare— That praise of them no fitting language hath. Divine was Rhodope—and Venus' wrath Was such at Erylesis' perfect throat, She dragged her to the forge where Vulcan smote Her beauty on his anvil. Well, as much As star transcends a sequin, and just such As temple is to rubbish-heap, I say, You do eclipse their beauty every way. Those airy sprites that from the azure smile, Peris and elfs the while they men beguile, Have brows less youthful ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... royal robes; the butchers drove a fat ox; the pastry-cooks bore on a splendid tray a variety of pastry and sweetmeats such as might tempt children of a larger growth than the little prince they had come to honor; the blacksmiths beat an anvil in time to their cheers; the shoe-makers brought a pair of miniature boots; the tailors had devoted elaborate and minute pains to the embroidering of a uniform of the dauphin's regiment, such as might even now fit its young colonel, ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... spume flashing out of darkness through the binnacle light almost took the boy off his feet. It pounded his oilskin, stung his face. The enormous iron dock groaned and clanged under the mad bastinado. The long arms of the shoring stanchions smote the walls in a kind of terrific anvil chorus to the blaring orchestra of the tempest. The joints of the three huge pontoons sounded as if they were being rent asunder every moment. One minute the great structure would rise dizzily, high into the black blast, a skyscraper flung up on a mountain ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... instruments and performers composing the great orchestra was 1,011; and an organ of immense proportions and power, built expressly for the occasion, was employed. The grand chorus and solo vocalists numbered 1,040. Besides, one hundred anvils (used in the rendering of Verdi's "Anvil Chorus") were played upon by a hundred of the city's firemen in full uniform; while to all this was added a group of cannon, the same being used in the performance of the "Star-spangled Banner." The vast chorus, the orchestra, ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... period when Becket opposed Henry II. He attempted, like the rest of the bishops, to heal the breach; and Tennyson, in "Becket," adopting a phrase he used, makes him say to his Primate, "Hath not thine ambition set the Church this day between the hammer and the anvil ... fealty to the King, obedience to thyself?" He went to Sens, to plead as an advocate on the king's behalf before Pope Alexander III. and the French king. The result of this meeting was that England was placed under the ban of excommunication. ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Chichester (1901) - A Short History & Description Of Its Fabric With An Account Of The - Diocese And See • Hubert C. Corlette
... area. It roughly exceeded Types B, D and E by a 2:1 ratio. Type C exceeded Types B, D and E with a ratio of about 7:5 in frequency of occurrence. Types B and D were the two most easily cracked nut forms when using a hammer and anvil for a cracking device. It should be noted at this time that all of the abnormal fruit types were found in conjunction with normal fruit types. Thus, one individual tree used as a collection might produce both a normal nut type (A, B, C, D or E) and ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various
... years, four feet three inches. Their simple food and early habits of exercise give them a muscular power and activity not often surpassed. It is recorded on the island that George Young and Edward Quintal have each carried, at one time, a kedge anchor, two sledge hammers, and an armourer's anvil, weighing together upwards of six hundred pounds; and that Quintal once carried a boat twenty-eight feet in length. In the water they are almost as much at home as on land, and can remain almost a whole day in the sea. They frequently swim round ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... agreed Arcot quietly, "and I intend to throw that star in such a way that we can escape between the twin fields! We can escape between the hammer and the anvil as millions of millions of millions of tons of matter ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell
... spectacle of ruin and desolation, but we found Dobri Petroff and Marika in the old home, which had been partially rebuilt. The blacksmith's anvil was ringing as merrily as ever when we approached, and his blows appeared to fall as heavily as in days gone by, but I noticed, when he looked up, that his countenance was lined and very sad, while his raven locks were ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... any man consent to give up his livelihood, even for the truth? This gentleman would have stayed on in his parish, happy in his hopeless incompetence, until his parishioners might have sent in a third request for his retirement, had not the irony of circumstance broken him upon its unyielding anvil. ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... Who first made, &c.] Musick is said to be invented by Pythagoras, who first found out the proportion of notes from the sounds of hammers upon an anvil ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... playing children, the belated smith ringing the evening chimes on his anvil in the smithy, the tits chirping among the firs, the crackle of the rough scales on the red boughs of the Scotch fir above him as they cooled—all fed his soul as though Peter's sheet had been let down, and there was nothing common or unclean ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... gray block of ironstone, a solitary portion of the superincumbent bed that has been washed away. It resembles a gigantic anvil, and it goes by the name of Thor's Stone. The slopes that dip towards it are the Thor's-lea, and give their name to the parish ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... the more important plaudits which you have had from every quarter. I should certainly have availed myself of the freemasonry of authorship (for our trade may claim to be a mystery as well as Abhorson's) to address to you a copy of a new poetical attempt, which I have now upon the anvil, and I esteem myself particularly obliged to Mr. Hatchard, and to your goodness acting upon his information, for giving me the opportunity of paving the way for such a freedom. I am too proud of the compliments you honour me with to affect to decline them; and with respect ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... hurled backwards, and, while it bears the nature and likeness of a star suddenly drops and becomes a meteor! What more piteous sight can the pious man behold? What can more sharply stir the bowels of his pity? What can more easily melt a heart hard as an anvil into hot tears? On the other hand, let us recall from past experience how much it has profited the whole Christian commonwealth, not indeed to enervate students with the delights of a Sardanapalus or the riches of a Croesus, ...
— The Philobiblon of Richard de Bury • Richard de Bury
... of misfortune on the anvil of racial expropriation, such leaders arose among the Moslems, men of iron, before whom all who worshipped at the altars of Islam bowed the knee. These men, whose fame extended throughout all the length ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... axe for an anvil, and the hatchet for a hammer, Sam was soon very busy forging his wrought nails into sharp arrow points, holding the hot iron in his wooden pincers. Among the things that Sam had thought it worth while ...
— Captain Sam - The Boy Scouts of 1814 • George Cary Eggleston
... others had been busy. They'd placed an anvil, real or imitation, on the green in front of the house, for the pictures were all to be taken out of doors. The blacksmith had begun to hammer away at a horse-shoe, and that was our signal to dash up to the door. He stopped hammering, pushed back his hat, and greeted ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... attention this afternoon, to the note of a bird in a wood, when passing over the mountain, named the Ferreirinho (little Blacksmith), from the resemblance of the note to the ringing sound of a smart blow from a small hammer on an anvil, ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... afraid my ear is out sometimes," said the man, mistaking her remark. "I think it comes of the anvil." ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... to his smithy; he reeled like a drunken man; His heart was riven with anguish; his brain was brooding a plan. Straight to his anvil he hurried; started his furnace aglow; Heated his iron and shaped it with savage and masterful blow. Sparks showered over and round him; swiftly under his hand There at last it was finished—a hideous and ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... nation is in the living temple of a loyal, industrious, and upright people. The busy click of machinery, the merry ring of the anvil, the lowing of peaceful herds, and the song of the harvest-home, are sweeter music than pans of departed glory, or songs of triumph in war. The vine-clad cottage of the hillside, the cabin of the woodsman, and the rural home of the farmer are ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... under way before the day's work began. Then the Artist shouldered his knapsack and departed; the lads trudged through the road to school; the women went about the house with untiring energy; the male hands were already making the anvil musical in the rustic smithy, or dragging stock to the slaughter, or busy with the thousand and one affairs that comprise the sum and substance of life in a self-sustaining community. We were assured that were war to be declared between the outer world and Ingram House, lying in ambush in the heart ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard |
